We all have a dozen or so stories that coalesce to define us. Today I am sharing one such story. Because this tale has a fine oral tradition, I thought it would be nice for me to read it out loud. You can click here to hear it. It is by no means a perfect recording, but it is me reading it to Daisy just before we published. Just as a warning, this post does run about three times the length of a normal WD post. If you can’t get through it now, please come back to it later.

Enjoy.
My high school had something called Academic Decathlon, a kind of kid quiz for the college bound; a contest pitting six of the mightiest minds from each of the state’s alma maters in a match to determine which campus housed the most gray matter. I don’t know how towering one’s intellect actually had to be, the baseline really couldn’t have been much more than to the tip of the tree tops, as I was asked to be on my high school’s team.

In fact, my guidance counselor wanted me to play ball so badly, she got me to walk off the field forever.

Let’s rewind.

By the time I was facing my guidance counselor, leaning forward in an armchair saturated by the sweat of an endless procession of adolescents, circumstance had set me on a a hopscotch across 8 different schools, an average of one every other year since birth.

This was my second high school. The first, an unfortunate engagement booked at a local Catholic college prep. This adds a dash of humor seeing as how my family was neither Catholic nor scholastic. The decision to enroll me was arrived at when my parents concluded, despite my protest, that the combination of my neighborhood school and the loud mouth fastened to my face was a potentially lethal merger.

The high school that served as setting for this particular tale was exceptional, at least by common criterion. Not only were the academics admired for miles around, the pleasant neighborhood lent itself rather naturally to an open campus where a short holiday could be booked by the simple submission of a well practiced signature.

Despite the open grounds, there was just one method to gain entry into the student body of this coveted school outside an enviable address, and that was through the school’s extracurricular annex – the High School for the Performing Arts.

I loved the idea of going to a slightly separate high school offering up classes in theater, graphic design, dance, music, and a myriad of other electives. I was especially attracted to drama, but because my face at the time was just recovering from a two year spell of looking like the inside of a Domino’s delivery box, I was loathe to stand on stage in front of an audience of judgmental peers for a performance, let alone the audition required of all new applicants.

My mom suggested I sing, “there are no strings to hold me down” from Pinnochio while wearing the lederhosen she had actually sewn. I’m not joking, but that’s a horrifying enough topic for its own post.

I ended up applying to “Technical Theater,” the limb of the academy that tightened the nuts and bolts of the rest of the body. I loved the learning and the hands on work. I didn’t love the extended daily days that teased the dark in winter, alongside occasional abbreviated weekends, when all I really wanted to do at 16 was work long and hard enough to gather enough dollars to get me out of Dodge.

By the time I was leaning forward in that armchair, my contempt for the system was already rolling to a boil. The spoiled students at that school were hard enough to stomach, but mostly I couldn’t abide the massive amount of missing minutes recklessly mined from an ineffective day. I have always loved to learn and it is one of the few disappointments of a mostly favored life that I consistently found myself as a youth wandering down halls of learning that housed little more than the empty echo of abandoned promise.

I’ll use my Geometry class as an example, because it is one that once raised my ire and yet has now with a decade and a half of distance twisted it toward a smile. In Geometry, we received one point for each homework assignment completed, these points then added to our test grade. There were usually about twenty assignments per unit. A student who did all the assignments, yet scored an 80% on the unit test, would then garner a perfect score of 100%.

I had no difficulty in getting a hundred from the merit of my mind and saw zero value in spinning wheels with busywork at home.

My teacher took issue with my lack of respect for her curriculum. I understood and responded. I told her I didn’t mind doing homework, but felt it should be worth my time. I had demonstrated no need for the extra practice and if she could perhaps provide me with some different work I would be happy to do it. Nope, she said, I could do the same work as everyone else.

I remember sitting in classes feeling minutes slip through my fingers that I would never hold again. I felt as though my school weeks were light on benefit and high in cost. I had been contemplating the GED or some sort of alternative future for a while by the moment providence placed me in the armchair.

The decathlon worked with six students divided into three categories: 2 A’s, 2 B’s, and 2 C’s. Guess which one I was? Gathering the A’s was easy. The gentleman leading the A-Team read trigonometry text books for grins, the other is probably lecturing to his class at MIT right about now. Quality C’s were a lot harder to come by, but the combination of my SAT and GPA made for a cocktail captivating enough for my guidance counselor to call me into her office for a meeting.

My guidance counselor gave me a long pitch, trying to convince me life would be rainbow water slides flowing into pools of milk chocolate if I were only to agree to be one of the team. All I had to do was trade tech for decathlon.

The downsides: My senior year would see school days that ran until 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday, along with Saturdays from early morning to afternoon.
The upsides: My SAT scores combined with my commitment to the decathlon could ostensibly grant me entrance into the college of my choosing.

“No thank you,” I said.

It was only at that moment, seeing the surprise trying to soothe the sudden anger in my counselor’s eyes that I realized she’d given this pitch before. Maybe not exactly, maybe not even for the decathlon, but she was used to both cold calling and closing the deal.

In retrospect, the Academic Decathlon was a tremendous opportunity; a long awaited chance to absorb information at the pace I had always craved. Not only did I fail to see it through that prism, that angle was never displayed at all. Her pitch was all about what she could do for me, all the while operating under the assumption that I wanted the same things that everybody else did. The truth was, I wasn’t feeling too keen on college. If secondary education offered even a fraction of the boredom of my previous years, I wasn’t interested. I wanted to build a business with my bare hands and didn’t want to hurry up and wait four more years to do it.

“No?” she repeated the question as though shaking my head alongside my answer wasn’t universal. “Did you not understand what I said?”

“I understood perfectly,” I replied.

“Well, Mr. Platt,” she dug deep into her superiority, “I can most certainly tell you that you are making a huge mistake.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“You won’t be able to get into a good college without my recommendation,” she said, though we all know I mean threatened.

“I’m not planning to go to college.” I let the moment settle as the Earth’s atmosphere absorbed the words that before that moment had never been anything but idle contemplation.

“You’re not planning on going to college?” I think in reality she merely sneered the question, but in my memory there is raining spittle and my guidance counselor is twirling a monocle like Snidley Whiplash.

“Nope.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and shook my head.

“Well then, Mister, You WILL FAIL.”

I wish that was only my memory, but alas those are indeed the front page, bold type words given breath by someone pulling a taxpayer paycheck to help effectively guide youth toward the most gilded of their goals. I stared in disbelief, for one of the first times in my life absolutely speechless. She viewed this as an invitation to add hue to the horror.

“I will look you up in ten years just to see how far you’ve fallen.”

At that point in my life, I had been known to get a bit riled up under such circumstances. Not so on this day. My anger in that moment was as deep as any ravine my emotions have ever run, but it merely hung pregnant like an an enraged cloud clinging to the horizon, unwilling to rain across the arid wasteland of her ambiance.

I calmly demanded my transcripts, immediately left campus, and drove across town to enroll in city college. Fortunately, there was a GED test scheduled for that coming Saturday so I was a certified graduate by the end of the weekend.

My parents were both amazing. My father asked me if I was sure I’d made the right decision. My mom probably gave me a high five chased by an off color joke or three, I can’t honestly recall. Regardless, both supported me in full.

I did have one teacher come to check on me. She was the best teacher I had at that school, and one of the best I ever had period. She taught English and was, I believe, the first person to give deep compliment to my writing. She came to my work one day carrying a smile and an “are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said, “I am.”

I ran into my guidance counselor seven years later, three years shy of our appointment. She was one of those souls I always expected to see again. I had mentally rehearsed the million and one things I was sure to let tumble loose from my mouth as soon as I did.

Alas, there is no high drama to conclude this tale. I looked different that day; my hair trim and neck more than just adam’s apple. I was leaving the bank just as my guidance counselor was entering. Her hands were juggling bags, my mind was wrangling sudden feeling. I could see her on the other side of the tinted glass, but she could not yet see me. I swung the door open and held it. She passed through the threshold and my heart stopped, two entire beats.

She turned around and looked at me with no visible recognition. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” I smiled from instinct. “Have a nice day.”

I nodded, turned around, and let the door swing shut behind me.

As I crossed the street to the flower cart I had purchased shortly after my 18th birthday, I wondered, “did she recognize me?” The light turned from red to green. I stepped into the street, thought of my pregnant wife waiting at home, and thanked her.

Writer Dad

Sean Platt is now a ghostwriter and father who lives happily ever after.