After both of my parents ended up in jail, I moved in with Uncle Ted. He was a deranged ancient man, however a fine hearted one. He did his best to take care of me. The thing about Uncle Ted was that he didn’t know all that much about little ones. I was 12 at the time, and honestly amazing at taking care of myself, so we ended up getting along remarkably well. When I was 14, he told me straight up that by age 18 I needed to have a way to make a living. He had a plan to make me his apprentice for his custom built furniture business. I was overwhelmed by the amount of work at the time. In teaching me how to craft the finest hand made wooden tables and chairs, he wasn’t giving me currency, he was giving me a school education in woodworking basically. If I put in the time, and that meant years not months, then I could easily acquire all the skills to custom make high end furniture, a skill set that not many people have these days. We started things very simple, with a nice coffee table, because there were a pretty good amount of flat planes on it. Wooden chairs and table legs in particular were more challenging, however over time I started to get nice at all the wood working. Twenty years later, I specialize in oak furniture and cherry furniture. True to my uncle’s word, but he couldn’t send me to school. He gave me a fancy education still, and I make a pretty nice living with handmade furniture.