Talk about being an expert

I took my 13 year old paint balling today with some good friends that happened to be our old neighbors. Tom, who is in his 50's, has been asking me to go with them for about 4 years now. I somehow have always had something else going on that prevented me going with him and his son. Much of the time it would be anything going on would be an excuse to not go. I usually felt guilty but wouldn't go anyhow. Today I had no excuse. Now, my back is killing me so even though I went, I did not play. My 13 year old who loves paintballing did get to play and I am sure had a great time. I just watched. Maybe next time.

On the trip down to BFE where we played, Nathan, Tom's son, rode with me and my boy. I havn't had the opportunity to talk with nathan on an adult basis ever. He is a very, very smart individual. When I say smart, I mean rocket science smart. Literally. He had an internship with NASA right out of college where he studied some kind of engineering. Now, he has his Master's and is a couple of years away from his Ph.d. The freakin kid is only 24. He has no idea how set he is. He thinks he does, but until you get some age on you, a wife, kids, bills, mistakes, etc... you really have no clue at 24 what the fuck you have ahead of you. Anyhow, I asked the kid what it was that he was doing with himself right now. His response struck me odd. He stated that he was doing what he wanted to do the rest of his life. ??? I asked him what that might possably be. What he explained, and some of the details might be off, was that he is working at childrens hospital in cincinati on a research project that focuses on the knee. He went into detail about molecular level anatomy and the effects of robotics etc... Nathan said this is the thing he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing. Research on kids knees. I don't understand? Don't get me wrong, I am sure this is a very important issue for a small percentage of the population, but, this kid is a god damn genius. How about lets cure cancer? diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. Things like that. Now one of the questions I didn't think to ask him was how he bridged from engineering to medicine so there is a little grey area I don't understand. But nonetheless, he is working to better things for people so amen to that. I have just never seen a 24 year old already have that much of an idea as to what he wants to do the rest of his life. And I mean specifically. Hell, I don't even know what I am going to be doing next year and I am 39.

He might want to practice a little more at maneuvers and sheilding himself for paintball wars though, he was the first and shot. And got it right in the neck. OUCH.