I can’t remember the last time my mother brought the HVAC van to our condo. Typically, she takes her own truck home and parks it at the Heating and Air Conditioning company headquarters, where she drops off the company van. She, however, had a sizable business venture underway in the neighborhood and decided to go the condo route. The Heating and Air Conditioning van proudly displays the name of mom’s employer and the services they provide. For many years, she has specialized in HVAC, and now she is leading a massive HVAC installation for a business. I really can’t express how proud I am of my mom. She is succeeding in a field where men outnumber women. Mom keeps impressing her boss at the heating and air conditioning company with her competence. To help me understand Mom’s career choice, I asked her to tell me the tale of how she became an HVAC technician. She had an HVAC technician come to her condo to fix a broken AC when she was in middle school. This was during the summer vacation, when the weather was too hot to function without air conditioning. When they awoke one morning, they found that their home wasn’t being adequately cooled by the air conditioner. Her father eventually called an HVAC service in the area for help. My mother pestered the HVAC technician who visited her childhood home with numerous questions. The man was pleasant, and he filled mom in on the ins and outs of the HVAC business. That’s when mom made up her mind to become an HVAC technician, so she enrolled in a training program.