Published: 17 Feb 2020
Well, those were the days, I’ll tell you. First the excitement of finding not only my first best friend, but finding the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, all in the same person. We had both overcome some serious injuries with the help of some great doctors, we’d added a very profitable scheme to our family’s business (Halloween Hayrides added in the Fall to our trail riding business), we’d learned to do competitive diving which we started in middle school and our freshman year of high school before we tried out for and were accepted as Olympic Diving Team members for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
I guess we made quite an impression on the judges and the spectators. We had earned a total of 8 medals, 4 each, 5 gold and 3 silver. We were 14 1/2 at the time. For our final two years of high school, (yes, we had skipped sophomore year) we mentored our school’s diving squad and led them to 2 state championships. We did the same mentoring for the UMASS diving team and during the summer after our freshman year we really began to train hard and we actually tried out for an active role on the diving team. Josh explained it to our four dads this way, we wanted to know if our previous success had been due to our youth and flexibility, was it a fluke, or was it an innate quality or instinct we just both happened to have.
Well, I guess it was the later two because we both excelled again, but after winning the college regional competitions for New England twice we actually stopped and concentrated on helping our team members get to the same level and to graduate with our degrees and a masters each. We were worried that diving would end up taking over our lives, and that wouldn’t have been as fulfilling to us as being educators. We had talked it over for a long time and we just didn’t feel any other field would be as rewarding to us, so teachers we became.
Our younger brothers, Bill, Brian and Justin, were high school juniors when we graduated from college and we really missed the youngsters they had been, not that there was anything wrong with the young men they had become, no, not at all, it was just we realized we wanted youngsters around us, and not just at school. So, when the dads told us what our wedding gift was to be from all four of them, and our brothers, we realized that we could either contract with a surrogate, or become foster fathers. To that end we did the required classes for licensing as foster parents and just a few days before our wedding we received our fostering certificate in the mail, and two days after our wedding we got a call from Helen Evans at the DCFS boys dorm in Springfield, telling us about twin six year olds who had been orphaned because of a car accident the family had been in on a frozen slush covered road. The parents died shortly after the accident, even as the boys were still being checked out by doctors in a different section of the emergency room.
The boys were battered and bruised, but nothing was broken, and they were just being observed for a few more hours to make sure no other problems arose with them. There were no known relatives, the parents having met while both were in foster care in their teens. We were nervous, and the driving was a bit treacherous as the sleet from earlier in the day had frozen where there had been no traffic on the roads, but sand trucks had been out and it was just under an hour before we had completed the 22 mile drive to where Helen awaited us with the boys. We had retrieved two of our brothers’ youth seats from one of the big storage sheds on the estate and while installing them, and during our drive, we went over and over with each other exactly what we were getting ourselves into.
When we reached the hospital and met Helen in the ER waiting room, she filled us in a bit more. She explained that she hadn’t immediately thought of calling us, but both boys said their parents were taking them to go swimming and to watch their father dive into the pool. That is what made her think of us. It turns out the father had dived on the Springfield high school diving team while he was in high school. Once she had decided on calling us, she had her assistant, Mary, go to the family’s apartment and gather as much of the boys’ things as possible and she would be meeting us here at the hospital before we left with the boys. There seemed a lot of paperwork to plow through, and then Helen left to make us all copies after her signature was made in the appropriate places. Because of the boys young age, these were permanent placement documents. While she was doing that, a woman who just had to be Mary, entered the waiting room, spotted us and walked right over to us. She introduced herself, but told us she knew who we were. She explained that she might not have recognized us right away, but that she had just seen two of our posters in the boys’ old bedroom and had rolled them up and they were in one of the boxes in her car right now with the rest of their belongings.
I went along with her to shift the boy’s belongings to the back of our SUV while Josh waited for Helen in the waiting room. Once the transfer was done, Mary excused herself and I went in to join Josh as he and Helen rose when I walked in and we made our way to a screened off exam room in the ER and we met Calum and Scott.
Our hearts melted when we met them, and they seemed to recognize us almost right away, they at least knew we were Max and Josh from the big pictures in their room and their daddy had told them all about us, and he had joined his school diving squad after seeing us dive at the division championships when we were in middle school. Josh and Helen had been assured that in the past few hours the boys had been told about their parents dying and when Josh asked them if they wanted to come stay with us they smiled for the first time since we had all entered their exam room.
Once the nurses were assured they had no internal injuries, the boys were checked one more time by the attending doctor and they were signed out by Helen. The boys walked out of the hospital with us while Helen kept watch as we buckled Calum and Scott into their seats in back and wished us all a good night and implored us to call if we needed anything, she only lived about 2 miles from us.
It was near dinner time by the time we had arrived home and someone must have been looking out a window in the big house, because my cell began ringing even as Josh parked our vehicle in our garage. It was Bill and he wanted to know if we wanted to come over for dinner. I asked if they were ready to sit down and he said they would be in about a half hour or forty-five minutes. I told him that we had a project to do, and maybe, if it was possible, he could come over to help us, and maybe the dads could come over with dinner, as we had a surprise for all of them. Josh called out into the phone that his two twin buddies should come over with him and maybe they could get their dads to come over with their dinners and join in the surprise too.
Within fifteen minutes we had the three teens standing in our entry, staring at Josh and me and the two little platinum blondes in our arms as we had been showing them all family pictures on the wall of our big family room. Calum and Scott turned to see who had come in and we introduced them to their new uncles, who we told them would help get all their boxes and clothes out of the SUV and put it all in their new room, so we had better go upstairs and let them pick out where they were going to sleep. Billy and Brian and Justin did a great job of bringing up their belongings to the room closest to ours, as the twins told us they always slept together. Now that their belongings were here, and we had plenty of helping hands available, we had their room put in order in almost no time, the big boys asking the little ones where things like their toys and games and picture books should go as Josh and I took care of their clothes. We took a lot of ribbing when the two posters of us had been found and unrolled and the twins wanted them out up on the wall next to their bed, so they could see them from all over the room.
Our other set of twins, Brian and Justin, were about to make a comment when Josh told them they had been a gift from the new twins’ father and that caused them to start to ask the youngsters exactly where on the wall they wanted the neat posters. By then our four dads had arrived and it was time for the new twins to meet them.
To us it looked like our dads had just received their Christmas presents all over again and while we set our big table in our kitchen for all eleven of us, the new granddads and uncles got to know Calum and Scott a bit more. It was a completely pot luck kind of dinner once we got everyone around the table, but the combination of pork chops and oven fried chicken proved a hit with everyone. Quite the way to throw our first dinner party, huh?
It seemed like the new uncles didn’t want to leave at all, but they had chores in the morning and we had all agreed to start Calum and Scott on ponies the next day, so off they went with our dads, back to their houses as we settled in to let the two little guys unwind from all the attention from the new guys they had just met. We too had a lot to get used to and many would have said that our own honeymoon might not have been the right time to have begun our fostering of the boys, but Josh and I had been together since we were 12 and the boys just made us feel like we had a purpose now. We would be dads, not just former Olympians, or former students, or someone’s teacher, we were now all grown up and dads. A lot of couples try to start their family on their honeymoon, and we started ours with two six-year-olds.
To the boys it was a totally new experience, coming so abruptly after their parent’s deaths, and that first night was the worst for them, after we got them both tucked into bed they dozed for a bit, but after about an hour we heard sniffling and some outright weeping coming from their room and we were there as soon as we could make it and had them cuddled into us as we tried to soothe them, and reassure them we were going to be taking care of them for a long time to come.
The next day was a bright crisp winter day and it would be perfect for a short ride in the corral so after breakfast Josh and I saddled up two horses and two ponies and before we even got the twins up on pony back, their grandpas were there, not wanting to miss a minute of their first ride. The boys held on to the saddle’s pommel (saddle horn) and we now had doting grandpas to lead the ponies as Josh and I mounted our horses to ride alongside of the ponies. The boys were thrilled with their first ride and the grandpas had taken turns leading and instructing, so everyone was happy. The barn dogs were happy with the boys and the boys admitted they hadn’t ever played with a dog before, so they had two new experiences before lunch.
We four ate lunch together, but after a rest for about forty-five minutes after, we gathered up our swimsuits and some towels and we walked over to the big pool enclosure and met up with the rest of the family there. We had an assortment of life jackets and thankfully there were two small enough for the youngsters, Calum, who was a tad fuller all over than Scott, who was just a tad thinner all over than his slightly older twin (by five minutes according to the paperwork Helen had supplied us). The boys showed us they really could swim, mostly underwater, but someone, either their father or mother had really done a great job teaching them how to behave in a pool.
We did do a few dives for them when they asked us to, but mostly it was more getting to know you time, but in the water. We weren’t there for long before our brothers joined us and then a lot of fun was had tossing the kids around and letting them jump off us. It was so much fun that I almost pouted when Josh said we should start getting ready for dinner soon. Tonight, should be fun for all of us because we were expecting company tonight, our best friends, Terry and Jason were expected to come over for dinner and we hadn’t warned them about us taking in the boys.
When our front doorbell rang about a quarter to six I was helping Josh with the garlic bread we were heating in the oven, the big pan of lasagna having been covered in foil and it now sat on the top of the stove, setting for a few minutes before we cut it into squares to be served. The garlic bread would take about twenty-five minutes and that would give us time to set the big long kitchen table. We had picked up two of the booster seats at my in-laws(Ron and Tom) and we had just put them on the bench seat along the back of the table which we had taken a leaf out of after last night’s big dinner and now Josh and I could each sit at one end, each of us having one of the boys to help with dinner and Jason and Terry could sit across the table from the two boys.
Josh had his hands full straining the green beans from the pan he had steamed them in and I was up on a step stool getting the bowl from a cupboard we’d need to serve the beans in. Apparently Calum had heard the bell and he ran to the front door to see if it was one or more of his new uncles or a new grandpa, and was totally surprised to see two college aged men there, but not as surprised as Terry and Jason were! Josh started laughing, and I knew just what he was thinking, if they were that surprised by one six-year-old answering our door, wait until they saw the other one!
Calum called Scott and he pointed to our visitors and said, “Look Scott, more Uncles, they are on the dads’ weddin pictures, the ones by the bookcase”. Scott went running to Calum and stared up at Jason and Terry. “Are you guys coming in? Dad told us to always close the door when it’s cold out. HEY DADs, we got some more Uncles here!!”
Josh and I were laughing our asses off by the time we went to the front door to greet our friends and we each gathered up one of our boys. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that this was the second time today that they had called us DAD, but we were not going to make a big deal out of it, for some reason they had accepted the loss of their parents and accepted us as their replacements, we’d just have to see if they felt that way when we dropped them off at Miss Loretta’s Day Care come next Monday when we had to go back to teach at our middle school, but right now our best friends were still trying to get their heads around the existence of our boys.
Needless to say, it was one of the most fun evenings, for us, the boys, and I think for Terry and Jason. The boys would listen to them telling much exaggerated stories about us when we were all younger and Scott and Calum would laugh uproariously and beg for more stories. The two pairs seemed to get along great and Josh and I were laughing at all the falsehoods our friends were trying to make our new sons believe. While Josh was escorting our twins to a restroom just before dinner Terry came up to me and hugged me, telling me that he and Jason wanted us to be their best men at their wedding on Valentine’s Day and that we were so lucky to have such adorable kids to raise. Jason told me the same things, but asked if the classes for fostering were hard and I told him no, but you really had to study each module in the course before taking that chapter’s quiz. By then Josh and the boys were back and our friends repeated their request to him, regarding us standing up for them at their wedding, and Josh was pleased and thrilled to be able to do this for them.
By Monday we had taken the boys by the day care center and they actually had a chance to meet Miss Loretta and things actually went well for them while we were teaching, which didn’t mean we were OK. We were a bundle of nerves until we could pick them up after school that first week. Once everyone was settled into our new routines’ things went very smoothly, the boys even more settled every week that went by. We’d had three unannounced visits by either Helen or one of her staff and everything looked really good to them, so when three months were up we petitioned the family court for adoption of the boys, but not before Terry and Jason’s wedding on Valentines.
Yes, Josh and I were the best men, but they had asked if Calum and Scott would act as their ring bearers and the boys thought that would be fun, so we got them little suits that seemed to match ours. The boys were a great hit with all that attended and Terry’s parents (Mr. And Mrs. Ellis) made a big fuss over them during the reception. A week later Josh and I had other visitors, these were unexpected, but oh so welcome. Greg Louganis and his husband Johnny called and said they were in the state and could they stop and see us for a few hours. It was a Friday, and so we were off for the weekend and we were so pleased they wanted to visit.
We talked them into staying for the rest of the weekend, as the event they had traveled out to New England for had already taken place, so after we gave them specific directions from Boston, we rushed about a bit fixing up a guest room and bathroom for them to use and while Josh finished making sure the boys were in clean clothing I drove to the big farm market and picked up some fresh steaks for dinner.
They hadn’t been able to come to our wedding, but had Skyped us the day before to lend their support and reaffirm we were in their thoughts. Their friendship went back to our diving days and we were thrilled that we’d have two days to spend with them, and introduce them to our sons.
The visitors arrived by 4:30 in the afternoon that Friday and Josh rushed out to help with their luggage and we saw through the window as Josh showed off the wedding ring he wore so proudly, and then he was rushing them into the house. I was waiting in the front entry with the boys and our guests stopped so abruptly in the doorway that Josh bumped into them from behind. It was kind of funny and the boys were giggling enough to get them all laughing. Greg joked that he didn’t know we “had” to get married and Johnny was crouched at the boys’ level and introducing himself. Calum and Scott had been shown their pictures and so were not insecure about meeting them. They asked me if these were even more Uncles and I told them that they definitely were, so the boys hugged Johnny and reached up to Greg who actually had tears in his eyes as he bent down to hug each boy.
Over coffee they got the full story as the boys were upstairs getting their swimsuits on as we thought that the rest of the afternoon could be spent by the pool as the dads and our brothers were off for the day at a farm sale in lower Vermont, hoping to buy a pair of draft horses and a couple of big farm wagons for the Fall hayrides and they were expected to be staying overnight up there.
We adults settled in at a table poolside as the boys got into their life jackets and then one came to me to have it fastened and the other went to Josh. Greg asked if we weren’t going in with them and I said we would eventually, but we had a lot of catching up to do. He looked at me like I had a talking cabbage for a head and Josh laughed as he threw the giggling boys into the pool. He told our guests to watch them, and soon enough our visitors saw how they dunked each other, swam underwater, and could do side to side laps back and forth. I spoke up and said they should see them diving and I swear both their chins hit the patio table we were sitting at, just three feet from the pool.
In their three months with us they had proved to be strong swimmers for six-year-olds and when they proved they could swim under water and do laps side to side, we had let them start jumping off the lower springboard, as long as there was someone there in the deep end to monitor them once they hit the water. They were not perfect in their diving, but they were both enthusiastic about it and they did try to emulate what low dives we had shown them already, just some basic dives, nothing fancy yet. Again, Greg got a bit emotional and we did eventually go in the water with the boys and we all had fun the rest of the afternoon.
The next day we all went for a horseback ride, the boys showing off again as they led us through one of the longer trails as three of the hands were on duty to take care of any paying riders and there was always someone to guide a group if they hadn’t been here before. It was a very relaxing day and about five that afternoon Ian called and asked if we had company and would everyone like to share in a cookout that evening for dinner. I told him that Greg and Johnny were here for the weekend and since everyone had nodded, I told him we’d come to their house for six thirty for a cookout dinner.
The next day was Sunday and after everyone was up and about, we put it to our guests that they should pick what they wanted to do that day, before their evening flight back to California. They choose riding and maybe a swim later, so that’s what we did. As we were getting ready for the pool later Greg asked if we ever went to the Swim Center these days. We told him we usually went every weekend to make use of the 10-meter platform. He wondered if maybe we could go there for a few hours, he’d really like to see Josh and me dive from the 10-meter platform (33 feet) again and see if we had gotten sloppy in our old age (we were only 22 at the time).
So, with a quick call to Tony and Jerry we were on our way, the boys in their car seats in the back of our sedan and Greg and Johnny following in their rental. Once everyone was suited up we went to the big diving platforms and while Greg and Johnny watched the boys, Josh and I warmed up, first on the pool apron and then in the water and after we were limbered up we kissed the boys and told them we’d be right back, we were going to show them some new dives. We made our way up to the highest platform and did our cannonball dive, first entwined and then in tandem. Our boys thought that was great and asked if we’d take them with us on our next dive. Apparently, others thought they were good dives also as the place was clapping and cheering for us. We did take the boys to the lowest springboard and while Greg and Johnny were stationed in the water we let the boys jump off the end of the diving board to the water below and our friends were right there to be able to monitor them and hand them up to us at poolside.
We moved over to the smaller pool to let the boys swim and we all stood in the shallow end talking, but keeping an eye on the boys. Greg asked if we had ever considered competing again and we told him we had tried it again in college, as he well knew, but we loved teaching, much more than competitive diving. He then asked how we’d feel about mentoring at the Olympic level and we told him we were honored to be even asked to consider it, but no, if one of our own kin were involved that might be another story, but we really did want a quiet country life, teaching and raising our sons, having time to spend with our families and spending time riding our trails.
Our visitors left later that day and then it was back to our comfortable schedule on Monday. By Thursday of that same week, the second week of March, Josh and I were comparing our end of the year programs for our seventh and eighth grade English classes, we each taught both, some periods 7th grade and some 8th grade periods also. We wanted to be as fair as possible since this was our first-year teaching and we knew that if we let something slide this year, we could be faced with the same problems if we got the same students in our next year classes. We began from that day to really prepare our students for the upcoming final exams, hoping to make our classes as interesting, and at the same time, as challenging as possible.
One of Josh’s students asked us a question one day as we stood outside our rooms during a period change. He asked if his older brother was right when he told him that we both had won Olympic medals when we were going to school here. I chuckled and then realized that our own students wouldn’t have been old enough to be able to remember the 2020 Olympics, let alone recognize us. Josh saw the boy’s expression change to one of disappointment from an excited one and told his 7th grader that yes, we had earned Olympic medals, but they were earned in the summer of our freshman year at the high school, what we had earned here at the middle school was state championships and the photos of those championships were on display in the lobby in those big display cases there.
He brightened up and thanked us, moving on to his next class as we each returned to our own classrooms to begin our next hour of imparting knowledge upon our students. It wasn’t until a few days later that we began to see a change in our young students. They stared at us, they were shy around us, they hesitated to ask us questions. It was a little unnerving. We talked about this in the teachers’ lunchroom and one of the other teachers on our floor told us about an encounter she had with one of her students who had asked her if we (the Mr. Wheelers) were really those guys who had won a bunch of medals at the Olympics in 2020. She had assured her student we were and then the student then said that was so cool to have famous athletes as teachers in our school.
Uh oh, we had a problem. To be just known for winning a bunch of medals was not what we wanted. We talked about it at dinner that night with Ian and Wayne and Bill. The dads saw our predicament, but they both told us that wherever we taught, people were going to talk, but Bill had a really good idea. Why not show the kids the movie that had been made about us, that movie started to explore our lives before we could even dive, or really swim, because of our limited abilities at the time? It told of Josh’s accident and the results, and of the car accident that my pelvis was broken in. It dealt with our recovery and the therapy we both had gone through and the start of us both swimming and diving.
We had a copy or two of that movie and after talking to our Principals at school the next day they agreed with us, that the kids needed to know the whole story. So, a date was set for a whole school assembly about three weeks before exam week started and the whole student body sat through the really well done, but very emotional movie. We stood in front of them and asked if there were any questions after and it really was kind of sweet the way the first questioner asked shyly if we were all right now. Josh took that one and he told the auditorium full of students and teachers that yes, we had both recovered and to prove to each other just how well we were, we started diving just for ourselves. Just like in the movie someone had posted clips of our diving and the rest is history.
There were numerous other questions and I think we handled them well, well enough that soon we were back to some greater degree of normality within our classes, which was the ultimate goal. The interaction within our classes was great and we felt that our students were finally back on track to doing really well, studying for their final exams. What we were not prepared for though, was the number of students who used us as subjects for the end of the school year term papers. It was kind of weird to be reading these essays done by a couple of dozen students who it seemed to us had done a great job on their research, even most of them interviewing someone from our middle school years, or even from our high school years, to get more information and quotes.
Some were excellent, they showed that a lot of thought and research went into the essays, some were fanciful and or funny, which made us laugh at some of the antics attributed to us from former teammates or fellow students at the time. It didn’t diminish that student’s paper though, no matter how outlandish, because the student had actually interviewed someone who just wasn’t privy to some pertinent facts. We decided, after letting our dads and brothers read some of the essays, (with the student’s names blocked out) to have the lot of them, even the funny ones, printed up and put into a collection to be published, once the grading was done and each of the students’ parents or guardians gave permission to have their work distributed.
We thought of the project as an end of the year gift to our students, but once we took it to a local self-publisher and she had all of the contracts prepared for us to sign, and the releases from the twenty four students by the parents or guardians were passed on to her along with our deposit check, she told us that she could have at least two hundred and fifty copies for us in about a week. Two days later she called us at home and told us that if we didn’t mind, she had obtained several photos of us during our school and diving days and she wanted to intersperse them into the completed manuscript. We told her as long as they were not copyrighted photos it was alright by us and then she asked us to write a sort of cover page for the finished book, explaining how the essays came about and what we thought about them.
We had that delivered to her after that weekend and by the Friday of the last full week of school we had delivered to us ten boxes containing our two hundred and fifty books. Since the next week was the last one of the school year we signed each book where our cover letter was and carted the boxes of books to the school.
The grades were posted on the Monday after that weekend and with Wednesday being the last day of school, we handed out the books on Tuesday. There were enough for each student in our classes and when the authors of the essays saw what was in the books, they were actually speechless. We each explained to all of our students that this should come as a lesson to them, that even at their ages they could produce something that could someway get into print. There was a lot of discussion about the books, but most wanted to know why their essays didn’t get printed. We were prepared for this question and we had agreed to tell the students that because of the research involved, the fact that no one had asked us questions, which would have been the easy way out, and because each of the essays was done independently from others who had not chosen us as their subjects, we jointly felt they deserved to be in some sort of collection, thus the books.
We told the seventh graders that if they wanted, they too could earn the same privilege next year, but we definitely did not want group efforts, their work had to be their own and no collusion would be tolerated.
Somehow the bound book made its way to a local book store in a neighboring town that had three major colleges in it and we began to get royalty checks in the mail from our self-publisher. When we stopped by one day after picking the boys up from day care at Miss Loretta’s, Sharon, the publisher/printer, asked why we hadn’t stopped by earlier. She had sent us a couple of emails and I guess we just thought they were spam or someone trying to get us to write a book. She further explained that the contracts we signed were her standard contracts and in there were a few paragraphs explaining that additional copies would be provided upon request, and she had had several orders from the parents of the students who wanted either their own copy or copies for friends or other family members.
Our contract with her stipulated that if X number of copies were printed by request, then she was allowed to print more and promote the book, which would then earn us and her more money. We were about to make 80% of the sale of each book, and she was about to send out several hundred to book vendors around the country and a listing for the book was just placed on an internet book seller, the largest in the world. She suggested we get with our lawyer to set up what we wanted to do with all the money she thought our book would earn.
Well, after the shock wore off, we realized that the students who actually wrote the essays in the collection should be able to benefit from all this, just as we had from our diving at their age. We set up a meeting with Sean and Rich Major, our financial adviser and lawyer, brothers of Noah Major. They had been our advisers when Ian and I were trying to purchase the estate originally, using parts of our individual inheritances from my birth father. What we ended up doing was splitting the royalties from the book into 25 parts, one part for each student and a part to be for Josh and me. The student’s portion was to be held in a trust account for each student and be available for their future education after high school.
We never expected it to be a big seller, but it did do really well on the internet bookseller, attaining best seller status there for months and months. It was a really surprising experience for all of us, but none more so than an invitation to all of us to appear on the Ellen Show. Her representative who contacted us was very gracious and told us that if we agreed to it, they would come to us, as they had for Jake and Allen, and even Stan and Frank. This way we were assured we could gather all twenty-four of the authors to sit with us, and to this end we decided that just maybe, since it was so close to the school year starting, that we just might get the use of a big room at our school.
It did work out great for all involved. The school was pleased to offer whatever they could and we ended up using the medium sized auditorium, as we had been told by our production assistant contact what kind of space would be their ideal space, and we were not to tell our students or their parents about their trust funds yet, they wanted us to reveal that at the taping. To their credit the production team allowed us to invite several people to be our “audience” and after our families and friends, we opened the other hundred or so seats to the kids to invite family or friends themselves, knowing that at least ten or twelve of our young writers were Major family members.
The day of the filming we were very surprised to see several TV antenna trucks outside the school, and all cars coming into the parking lot were checked out by security, assuring that anyone entering had the invitation slip with them. Once inside the building we had to go to a close by classroom that had been turned into “makeup triage” for those that were going to appear on camera, including Calum and Scott, who were now 7 and about to join several of their friends in first grade at the end of the month. While sitting on chairs the boys watched as the shine was taken off us and the two dozen students with us in the room having the same thing done to them. They found all this terribly amusing.
Their laughter drew a bit of attention, the door of the room opened, and in walked Ellen herself. Our students went nuts, the twins went silent, both groups recognizing her from TV. She welcomed us all and shook everyone’s hands and when she crouched down to do the same with Calum and Scott they rushed into her arms, hugging her. She asked who they were, and they said they were with their dads while pointing to us. They asked her why she wasn’t on TV today and she said she would be in a few minutes and they would too. She came over to us as we stood and we each hugged her as she told us how beautiful our boys were. We sat in a corner as the layout of the show was explained, the twins listening in.
We were totally amazed, but as she talked, we listened, as Ellen explained how she expected things to go. She wanted about fifteen minutes of us (Josh and I) talking to her about our diving and the Olympics and then she’d have Calum and Scott brought out and we’d talk to her about our life after being in the spotlight which would lead into our teaching, getting married and starting a family and the student’s essays we had made into a best-selling book. The whole show was being based around us and although it was something we didn’t particularly want, it was a way to get our students highlighted and on air, and we knew they deserved it, copies of their first royalty checks that had been placed in their individual trust funds would be distributed during this segment.
Everything went as planned; the school auditorium having been transformed into a TV talk show studio. When it came time to introduce the students, we had each stand as we introduced them and handed each an envelope with their royalty check copy in it and there were gasps and cheers from them and their parents in the audience. The segment with our boys was cute, they played all shy and all until they talked about their Uncles and Grandpas or their ponies and then Greg was brought out to the stage we were sitting on and the boys ran to him getting cuddles from their famous Uncle.
Josh and Max, and what life is like after the Olympics! Our authors receive no payment other than your emails to them. Email Art at: ArtWest at CastleRoland dot Net