From a “Dear Abby” post in The Province (Vancouver, BC) February 11, 1990
Dear Abby:
No problems here today–just happiness and bursting with pride!
In 1985, a young man wrote to you, wondering if he should go back to college. He said, “I am a 36-year-old college dropout whose lifelong ambition was to be a physician, but it will take me seven years, and in seven years I will be 43 years old.
Your answer: ”And how old will you be in seven years if you don’t go back to school?”
Abby, that made a tremendous impression on my son, who was 29 years old at the time. Danny had been toying with the idea of going back to college to study ornamental horticulture and landscape design, but he thought he was too old to be going to classes with students so much younger than himself.
Well, Danny clipped that column and went back to college, and every time he became discouraged, he would read it again. As you can imagine, it is now yellow and worn, and finally had to be wrapped in plastic to hold it together.
This morning Danny Anderson graduated from the university–with honors!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Danny’s Mom.
