If there is a sweet spot in life it has to right at the intersection
of freedom and resources and for me being sixteen and a junior was
exactly where I needed to be. I had sufficient money from working
with my dad and I had a vehicle. Gas was about as cheap as free and
responsibilities were few. College plans could wait a year and all I
needed was to focus like a laser beam on getting chicks. I took that
job seriously now that I could drive I could go out every night
because my parents had a mostly lassie fair method of parenting that
only clamped down if my dad was under stress at work for some reason
and then the parenting would get all righteous for a day or two and
then snap back under the weight of the mental load to its natural
state of minimal effort. If I paid lip service to whatever and flew
under the radar I was basically unrestrained and uninhibited.
Unfortunately I was no good on my own recognizance and was constantly
coming late to school or just going to school to find a girl or in a
pinch, a dude, who would be willing to slack off and go climbing or
to the movies or to go hang out at someones house for no reason
except to not be at school. I had the benefit of being really smart
and already knowing everything that I needed to pass all of my
classes easily except for those joke classes that require attendance
to pass. That is why I opted out of P.E. Which almost cost me my
graduation. Otherwise I was doing fine with A's in all but one class
and the liberty to come and go as I pleased. The problem was that
they had rather good accounting about who was and who was not at
school and my excessive absenteeism was getting me in deep trouble
that I was not aware of until the first midterm. I got my midterm
reports and I had a 'U' or Unsatisfactory citizenship grade in all
eight of my classes. I wouldn't have cared except I would be banned
from sport events, dances, and all extra curricular activities and I
loved debate and dancing so I had to straiten up and fly right. They
had a program for working off 'U' grades which took about an hour a
piece or else your parents could call up and pay a fine for your 'U'
to go away. My parents were not going to be doing that so I had to
work them off with some detention. I showed up at three the first day
and stayed till five which was counted as four hours because teachers
are generally not so wedded to the rule as law so much as the rule of
their free time. I finished up with another of those two for ones the
next day and learned a valuable lesson. I could do whatever I wanted
for three months and pay my debt in four hours of reading at a desk.
See? School does teach kids important life lessons.
