Summer was about to start.\u00a0 My sophomore year of high school was grinding to a miserable, hormone-addled, C-minus-average halt.\u00a0 The lowlights of the year: I’d gotten a strong-“F+” average in Geometry, I’d gotten straight “D”s in the grammar semester (after aceing the literature and writing half of the year), and I’d finally given up the ghost on whatever passed for an athletic career – a tough choice, since I did love playing basketball; I just hated coaches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The highlights: I’d gotten straight “A”s in the various social studies classes (Modern Africa, Western Civ, Modern Asia, offered in quick ten-week hit-and-runs), which was the norm for me.\u00a0 And after my performance in Geo, I’d snuck out a “B” in the final, which salvaged a “D” for the year.\u00a0 I’d played the “villain”, “Mortimer Frothingham”,\u00a0in the fall play, a melodrama, and had managed to parlay my meager skills on the guitar into a spot in the stage band.<\/p>\n
Lower-lights?\u00a0 My hair was greasy enough to wring out in liquid form.\u00a0 And while I was finally getting toward the end of my acne-ridden phase, my face still looked like Bryan Adams after a bad run-in with a wolverine.<\/p>\n
Mid-lights? I was taking biology in summer school.\u00a0 Summer School at Jamestown High School back then was an odd combination; half the kids were the ones that’d flunked the classes, and needed to pass to graduate.\u00a0 The other half were the highly-motivated kids – and, my grades notwithstanding, I was, if only because getting three years of summer-school credits out of the way would allow me to graduate at least half a year early.\u00a0 And I really, really wanted to do that.<\/p>\n
But summer was coming.\u00a0 And more than anything, I wanted a job.<\/p>\n