rlfj - A Fresh Start

On the basis of my amazing standardized test scores, I was assigned to the college prep crew, and my mother never let me forget it. As I mentioned, her duty was to make sure I fulfilled my academic destiny and my grades were never good enough. She was the sort who could complain 'Carling, you only got straight A's. You have the potential for so much more !' and mean every word. If I had graduated as valedictorian, it would probably not have been sufficient. My rebellion was to not give two shits, and I was a B- student at best. B- among the college prep kids, at least. This would have still been considered an A student among the normal kids. Worse, I often dated the normal kids, and even had friends among the dregs of humanity, the Vo-Tech crowd. I was smart enough, at least, to hide the last fact from my parents.

I picked up my algebra book and glanced at my homework sheet to see where in the book we were. I found my place easily enough and reviewed the chapter, but decided I needed to catch up, so I started at the beginning of the book. After a couple of hours, I had finished the book. This brought up a new dilemma. I had already gone through this shit the first time around - would I be able to survive doing it a second time without going batty? I glanced through the rest of my books and confirmed my fears.

I stood up and stretched and went to the kitchen and made myself a ham and cheese sandwich. I was hemmed in by the fact that in the here and now, I needed to graduate high school, graduate college, and get at least one graduate degree to make something of myself. It didn't matter that I had already gotten an associates, two bachelors, and a masters degree the first time around. That didn't count.

When I got out of high school in '73 I had gone to Rensselaer, RPI, for a bachelors in chemistry. Immediately after graduating in '77, I had gone to night school and gotten an MBA. Then, ten years later, in a new job, I had gone back to school for an associates and then a bachelors in computer science. If I was to repeat the sequence, I would go nuts.

But I could make some changes. As I thought about it, I started to get a wacky kind of idea. Way back when, in '78 the first time around, I had toyed with the idea of switching majors to become a chemical engineer. I have always been comfortable in an industrial setting and working in engineering related fields, probably thanks to my dad being an engineer. When I mentioned this to him, he just nodded and had a chemical engineer he knew talk to me. We all had a very pleasant dinner and discussion, and at the end I realized that I was actually a much better chemist than I was an engineer. I stayed a chemist and compensated by specializing in industrial chemistry. Any chemist can make drugs in the lab - I could make them by the ton in a factory! I spent the better part of ten years doing this.

But it was only after several years that I realized that I was actually a much better mathematician than I was a chemist! By the time I got through with my degrees I had certainly had enough math classes. Quantum mechanics is nothing but another semester of calculus. I picked up operations research and linear algebra getting the MBA, and so forth. By the time I got the degrees in computer science, I had the equivalent of at least a bachelors or a masters.

There used to be a television show called Numbers , about a math professor who had a brother who was an FBI agent. Every week he would come up with some strange aspect of set theory or number theory or information science to figure out who the killers were. In a hundred people, I would have been the only one who could not only understand what he was talking about, but could also figure out the shortcuts and discrepancies the show had to take.

My first foray into this had been at RPI. Everybody in the school had to take three semesters of calculus (the place is nerd heaven) plus either a semester of differential equations or a semester of computer programming. I had suffered enough with calculus so I took computer programming. Even though I was stoned and drunk about ninety percent of the semester, I still managed a solid B in the class. I even considered getting into programming, but no, I was a chemist; I put that silly thought out of my mind. The funniest part was that when I was a senior and needed an elective, I actually took differential equations on a lark and got another solid B, again half-baked the entire semester. A math degree, especially considering that I remembered most of my math, would be a breeze. I was going to have to give this some serious thought.

I reviewed the rest of my books. English 8 was simplistic bullshit. It didn't get interesting until senior high. The same was true of Social Studies, which didn't break down into history until then. You would get a year of American History and then a year of World History, and then a year of whatever subjects were trendy. In the eighth grade we took General Science, not taking anything specialized until Biology in the ninth grade, a year before the rest of the kids in the school. This wasn't all that bad, however. Our Science teacher was Mr. Rodriguez. A generation later he would be considered Hispanic or Latino; in 1968 he was known as the 'little spic.' I didn't much care. That 'little spic' was the reason I became a chemist. He was a damn good teacher!

I was still reviewing things when Mom got home from Hutzlers. She gave me a curious look when she saw me studying, but her only comment was that I damn well better be right about getting back into school. I just smiled and nodded. When Suzie and Ham got home, he just ignored me. Suzie teased me about my black eye and I offered to give her one. She just giggled and ran off to Mom. Ten seconds later I heard a loud "Carling! Will you knock it off!?"

I just yelled back, "Yes, Mom." I didn't mean it. There had to be some way to have some more fun with this.

Dad got home about half past five. He just told me that he had a phone call from Steiner. We had an appointment at school at nine the next morning, and supposedly everything was worked out. Dad was doubtful; he had a hearty mistrust of all lawyers. I remember dating a girl in high school who had gone on to become a lawyer. Years later Mom asked if I remembered her. When I said I did, she mentioned that she had become a lawyer, and had married another lawyer, and that they now had two kids. Dad promptly quipped, "Oh my God, now they're breeding!"

Dinner would be in half an hour. I found Suzie watching TV in the family room. I sat down on the ratty old couch we had down there. "Want to play a joke on Mom?", I asked.

Suzie giggled and nodded. In many ways she was the most normal of us. She grew up to become a nurse, married a divorced cop with two boys, and had another two boys with him. They did very well together. Her biggest problem when she was growing up was her teenage years. She was a real pain in the tail, to the point I nicknamed her the Ice Queen Bitch From Hell. My parents used to say that she had 'growing pains.' I took this to mean the normal adolescent issues, which seemed to me to be wholly inadequate to describe her, but this actually was their clever little euphemism for actual pains. She had terrible PMS and menstrual cramping, which made her miserable for almost two weeks of every month. It was so bad that her gynecologist put her on the Pill to control her cycle, which worked wonders for her, though it totally freaked out our father.

"Do you have a water color paint set?" I thought I had seen her painting with it the other day. She nodded and I told her to go bring it down to the laundry room. She scampered off.

She was back a couple of minutes later, acting all sneaky and surreptitious. "Okay, what are we going to do?"

I opened up the kit and grinned. "We're going to give you a black eye!"