This week the topic is ‘What was your best ‘drop the mic’ moment?’

I must admit, I had not heard that phrase here in East Anglia, UK.  I’ve heard of ‘Taking the Mick’, but not ‘Dropping the mic’.  However, my US blog-hopper friends quickly translated it for me as a kind of ‘glory’ moment that you experience when you know you’ve nailed it.

Okay, well… I had to wait a long time for my glory moment – I’d say about 20 years.  It all goes back to when my sons Leon and Marc were aged 16 and at the point of leaving school.  Neither of them wanted to go to university; in fact all Leon wanted to do was play computer games, and all Marc wanted to do was play his guitar in the garage along with several hirsute, unwashed musos that you’d never want to come across on a dark night.

I informed both boys quite sternly that they would have to do something to earn a living, and reiterated what my own father had said to me: “If you think you’re going to sit on your arse and do nothing, then you can think again.”

Leon carried on playing computer games, and Marc turned up the volume on his Mesa Boogie amp to drown me out.  I asked them how they intended to eventually keep a family and pay a mortgage, but they told me they had no intention of ever getting married and had no desire to move out in the foreseeable future.

However, I was not to be put off.  I knew the boys were not particularly academic, but they were very practical like their father.  I went along to a place in town that advertised apprenticeships for young people aged 16 -19.  I came away with a list of local apprenticeships available, and stuck them in front of Leon’s nose in 1998 and again in front of Marc and his guitar-which-needed-to-be-surgically-removed in 2001.  Both boys reluctantly picked out two each.  Then it was a case of making sure they’d filled in the application forms correctly, which unfortunately neither one was in any hurry to do.  I even posted the bloody forms as well.

About two weeks before they left school, the boys received invitations to attend for apprentice interviews.  Nervous, suited and booted, they turned up. They must have impressed the interview panel, because Leon received offers to become either a car mechanic or an air-con engineer (he chose the latter), and Marc had an offer to become a lathe operator/CNC machinist.  They left school on the Friday and started work on the Monday and were actually quietly delighted, especially when they discovered they would be paid a weekly wage and given a day off to attend college.

Twenty years on,  after many exam passes and a couple of changes of employers (but still not with any university degrees between them), Marc is the general manager of a Cambridge-based precision engineering company, and Leon is a senior manager in a nationwide building/engineering company, ever competitive, and with his sights set on getting the same title as his younger brother .  They’ve both taken time to thank me for my efforts in obtaining them gainful employment when they were 16 and didn’t know any better, which they realise eventually helped them to pay their mortgages and keep the families they said they’d never ever have!

I must admit, when my now 30-something sons thanked me and gave me a hug, I think it was my ‘Drop the mic’ moment.

What was your ‘Drop the mic‘ moment?  Click on the blue button below to discover other blog-hoppers’ moments of glory, or even add your own:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.