One June day after school let out (I had just finished 10th grade), she asked me what my plans were for the summer. I told her I hoped to slouch on the couch and watch television. "That," she announced, "isn't good enough." She showed me a piece in The Washington Post (our local newspaper) about excavations beginning in a week's time in the nearby Shenandoah Valley, at the recently-discovered Thunderbird Paleoindian site.
"Would you like to join the group?"
"Sure," I said, figuring at that late date the university's plans must already be set and they couldn't possibly want to take some snotty high school kid. I went back to watching My Favorite Martian.
Never underestimate your mother.
A day later she'd made fast friends with the administrative assistant at the office, who then talked the project director - Bill Gardner, of Catholic University - into taking me on. He wasn't so keen on my being there, either! That was over 30 years ago. I went on to excavate for four consecutive seasons at the Thunderbird and nearby Fifty site, and I've been doing archaeology ever since.
I'm not sure why that newspaper story caught my mother's eye, or why she thought her son would enjoy the experience. And I'm certain she didn't imagine it would set me on a career. But I guess that's just a mother's gift, now, isn't it?
(Although I've told it many times, this story first appeared in print in the Dallas Morning News, December 24, 2001)