Annabelle’s interview with her dad

00:00 My name is Annabelle. I am twelve years old. Today is Sunday, May 5, and I am speaking with my dad, Craig. Are there any traditions that have been passed down in your family? Can you tell me about them?

00:14 Absolutely. Thank you for speaking with me, Annabelle. So we have a lot of traditions on my side of the family that are probably different from what you guys, a lot of your classmates and teachers are familiar with having. My, both of my parents from Scotland, and I was born in Scotland as well. So even all of my grandparents, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, most of them are all still over there as well. So we have a lot of traditions around the holiday season that are probably quite different that we pass down. Some of them, we don't do as much here as a family, but if we were still back visiting, like we sometimes do around the holidays, we would do those with the family. Just a couple of examples. Some of the stuff we do still do is when we're having a Christmas celebration with my family, we always have a Christmas breakfast that includes sausages, kind of like a canadian bacon, morning rolls, and a lot of other foods that you don't often have here, maybe like cooked mushrooms, cooked tomatoes, stuff like that. And then at Christmas dinner, we celebrate and have what's known as Christmas crackers. They're little, almost like tug of war poppers that you sit next to someone and you pull against each other and it makes a popping noise when it breaks. And whoever gets the contents of it, the bigger end of it, gets all the contents. It usually includes a hat, like a little, like, almost like a little crown, paper crown. It includes a little trinket and oftentimes a piece of paper with some jokes in it. The other big one over there is for new year. We actually call that hog manethe. What you do is just like here, people stay up late at night and they do have a party together. But usually what happens is right at once, it hits midnight, just like over here, everyone celebrates. But then you do what's called first fitting, okay? And so what you do is some people actually get spend all night walking around, visiting neighbors, going and visiting them, and they'll go into their home and they'll celebrate with some snacks and, and it's introducing themselves for being there for the first time in the new year. And they usually bring a gift as well.

02:25 Can you tell me about where you grew up? What was it like?

02:28 Sure. So I grew up in a couple of different places. I was, of course, born in Aberdeen, Scotland, very young. We moved to a little village in England. Called Hemel Hempstead, and then eventually to Leverstock Green, which is an even smaller village. Maybe just about 800 people lived there. And then I moved to Atlanta when I was nine years old, and we've been here since. So I would say that they were all different experiences entirely. England, especially. We were living in a little village. We lived four doors down from the church. School was a half mile away, and so we'd always walk to and from school in the mornings. And on the way to school, you passed the little village green, which included a cricket green. It included some football or soccer pitches. And you also had there the small market for grocery shopping. You had the newspaper shop, the butcher. You had the bakery, the pharmacy, the doctor. So everything was there for you if you needed it. And then, of course, when we moved to Atlanta, we moved here, and I started going to great Atlanta Christian. And so that was definitely another experience entirely. And we enjoyed that. The biggest differences, I would say, is here you have to drive to get to a lot of places, whereas back in England and Scotland, you can take transportation or a lot of places. It's really easy to walk around.

03:52 What was one of the worst things you ever did as a kid?

03:55 Oh, boy. So one time as a kid, I did actually have an illness, which led to my leg getting locked up. And I had to be in the hospital for about a week in something called water traction to help straighten my leg out. I kind of. I wouldn't say I enjoyed being in the hospital, but I enjoyed being taken care of and not having to go to school. So about a year later, this is the bad part. I pretended to have that same illness, and they couldn't figure it out. But I ended up going and hanging out in the hospital for three or four days and got a video game system out of it.

04:28 What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

04:31 You know, I wasn't really sure when I was your age what I'd be when I grew up, but when I went into middle school and high school, I really liked science, math, and physics, especially, which told me I really wanted to go to school for that. So I ended up going to Georgia Tech, and I initially wanted to be an aerospace engineer and kind of go work for an airliner. And then I wanted to go be a mechanical engineer at BMW. I ended up being an industrial engineer, and I helped improve processes and develop software.

05:02 Do you like your job?

05:03 I do really like my job. I have. I'm the general manager at a software company, and our software helps dentists and their patients communicate, make sure they get taken care of, get their treatment. And I also, more importantly, get to really help my employees. We have a really good team of hard workers, and we get to take care of them and sometimes get to enjoy each other's company as well.

05:25 What are your dreams for me?

05:27 My biggest dreams for you is that I want you to be happy, healthy, and I want you to be strong and independent and not have to rely on other people to take. Take care of you.

05:36 Are you proud of me?

05:37 I'm very proud of you. So is mom. You're smart, you're kind, you're hardworking, and you always do what mommy and daddy tell you to do, unlike my brothers.