Yeah, very much a *simpler times* situation.

Sophomore year, for reasons not directly related to this story, I took and passed the California High School Proficiency Exam. That meant I technically had a diploma for California purposes.

By senior year I had taken the SAT and Achievement Tests (ACH) you needed for college. For each set of SAT and ACH scores there was a corresponding high school GPA you needed in order to be accepted to the University of California. In those days (though not for much longer, due to jokers like me) there was a special case: If your scores were high enough there was no GPA requirement. My scores were high enough. All I needed to get into UC were my test scores and a high school diploma (which, thanks to the proficiency exam, I already had). So when I applied to UC Irvine early in my senior year I was accepted right away.

I did not at first realize what this meant.

At my high school we were required to take a US Government class to graduate. The teacher of this class was notoriously hard-assed. He required deference and diligence.

I was weak in those areas. I blew off the assignments and made myself difficult. (Not because I saw what was coming. Just because.)

Things came to a head two weeks before graduation. The final term paper for the class was due on Monday morning. I’d done no work on it. Sunday night I was staring at a blank page, steeling myself to bullshit through the required 10 pages, when I had a thought: What if I just didn’t turn it in? What could they do to me?

Well, I’d fail the class. I wouldn’t be able to graduate.

Uh huh. And?

On Monday morning I skipped Government and used the payphone in the office to call UCI admissions. They assured me that I didn’t need my high school GPA, or my school-issued diploma. I was already enrolled for the fall.

So I walked over to my counselor’s office and told him I was dropping out. He tried to talk me out of it, but none of his arguments made sense to me. I didn’t want to write that paper. And they had no actual leverage to make me do it. So I didn’t.

Looking back 40 years later, I wish I’d stayed. Dropping out gave me a momentary feeling of power, but it also gave me a fair amount of unexpected headache. (The family I was boarding with kicked me out, for one thing.) In hindsight it would have been way cooler to stay, but engage in all manner of Magic-Christian-style shenanigans.

For that matter, if I was reliving those events with me-of-today insight, I could have done a lots of things differently. I could have actually learned things. I could have been a better person. My real beef was with my (largely absent) parents. The adults at my high school were just trying to help me.

But I couldn’t see it. I was all sturm und drang in those days.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/625832304244326400.

pristine: what’s your coffee order?

I usually have a biggish coffee drink of some kind in the early- to mid-afternoon. If I forget I wake up the following day with a slight caffeine-withdrawal headache. Not proud of that, but it has become a thing.

The version I make most often is iced coffee from the home-brewed pot I made a day or two before. I mix in some sugar (half a teaspoon, maybe, for about 14 ounces of coffee?) then throw in a bunch of ice and finally some half-and-half (if I’m being self-indulgent) or milk and watch it curdle around. I like that part.

tranquil: what’s something you do every day?

The most me-specific thing is probably the daily eBird list. My personal rule is that it must be a “complete”/non-“incidental” list (which is an eBird thing meaning I was actively birding as a focused activity and am listing every bird I was able to identify). My current streak (which dates pretty precisely to when the current obsessive interest kicked in after a lifetime of more-casual birding) is:

Lately (or in the past, when I’ve had a cold or flu or whatever) the list has sometimes just been me standing in my tiny backyard. In those cases my rule is that I have to bird for at least 10 minutes. This morning’s was one of those. After waking up I was in the bathroom doing what one does (sorry; tmi) and out the window saw some distant swallows. One species that I know has recently begun migrating through is Violet-green Swallow, and these looked like they might be those. But the current zeitgeist requires obsessive hand-washing even before excessive birding, and by the time I could get outside with my bins they were gone. But I figured I might as well do my daily list, and just as the mandatory 10 minutes was coming to a close I saw the same or a different flock flying over, and mixed in with the expected Cliff Swallows were a number of Violet-greens, huzzah!

honey: what’s your favourite memory?

Oh wow. There are so many to choose from.

I’m going to pick this one: I’m 4 or 5, in the backyard of the house on Hilton Dr. My grandparents are visiting from back east, and I’m sitting with my grandmother. She points out a mockingbird on the lawn. “When it flies you’ll see white flashes in its wings. You can always tell a mocker by the white flashes in its wings.” And then it does fly, and the flashes are there.

I don’t really remember the bird, or the house. But I remember her smile, and her voice, and the way her hair curled around her head.

Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/613400652154093568.