Chapter 28: The Beginning of an Ending

Monday, August 15, 1983

The weather as we left for school gave no sign of what was to come. Mom demanded first-day-of-Senior-year photos, so we obliged her, of course.

We picked up Jas, then Paige, and then headed for school. The parking lot was full of people greeting each other, and we joined in. I hugged a bunch of people (some of whom I even knew) and kissed a few girls (mostly ones I knew, but there were a few cheerleaders I only barely knew).

They’d posted our schedules in the courtyard, so we headed that way well before first period to see what we had. I had the advantage of knowing that I could make it through Senior year easily, even with some tough classes.

My first class was AP English with Ms. Epstein. I’d done well in it my first go-round, and I was a better writer now than I was then, so I wasn’t very worried. P.E. in second period was a no-brainer, of course. Fat, lazy Steve had gotten an A, after all.

Third period was Tom Myerson’s CLEP Government and Economics class. It would most likely be my hardest class, and also my most rewarding.

After that, lunch, and then fourth period brought Calculus with Ms. Emory. When I’d awoken after arriving here, I remembered knowing Calculus. It certainly wasn’t fresh, but I had all of the concepts down, and I was a better student now than I’d been in my first go-round.

My last three electives would be no challenge at all, academically. Fifth period was Don Hannity’s Computer Math class. I could teach that class with ease. It was on my schedule mostly so that I had something to point to when discussing computer classes with college counselors.

Sixth was, of course, Drama, and seventh was Debate, just as in previous years.

Barring major injury or the like, I was going to graduate with straight A’s as planned. So would many of us. I’d still do no better than the twenties in class rank, maybe the thirties, but that didn’t matter at all. Hopefully, Connie would finish as valedictorian. I’d love to hear her give the speech. She had a standing offer from all of us to help her draft and polish and to give her tips and a friendly audience.

I had friends in every class, of course. The surprise (if there was one) was Tom Myerson’s course. Angie, Jas, Cammie, Paige, Mark, Morty, Mel, Jess, Darla, Linda, Sue, Gene, Lexi, Sheila, Amit, Jimmy, Connie, Carole, Cal, Andy, and Calvin were all in there. That would make for a great class, but it was such a great group that I suspected meddling.

My first two classes went just fine, not that there really was anything that could go wrong. I got a surprising (or maybe not) number of comments about seeing my profile in the paper. Not all that many high school students (even at Memorial) read the papers that regularly. My suspicion was that a number of parents had pointed it out, but who knows?

The funniest part was Ms. Epstein. Our class was heavy on writing, and most of it would be formal, but she decided to toss out a golden oldie: ‘What I Did On My Summer Vacation.’

I thought about it for two seconds, then decided I’d let her have it, or at least everything I could reasonably talk about, complete with introducing my girlfriend to my relatives, getting hit by a truck, and then Reagan’s speech, the interviews, the invitation, more interviews, Simon & Garfunkel and the other outings, staying up on the beach, and...

Well. It was going to be a long paper. Unless she had inside sources, I suspected I might get some questions about it. Maybe even a ‘This was supposed to be factual!’ response.

I couldn’t wait.

The assignments were due Friday. I had a feeling we would be turning them in just a bit late.

As I’d fully expected him to do, Tom Myerson was standing outside the door to his classroom greeting us by name (and telling those of us who didn’t know, which was very few, to call him Tom).

I walked right up and shook hands. “Hi, Tom.”

He grinned. “I thought I was looking forward to this before Prom. Then, more, after it. Then, over the summer, you exceeded expectations again. I may have created a monster!”

I chuckled. “You probably haven’t even heard about the truck.”

“Truck?”

“I got hit by a truck. Yes, it was moving. The guess is about twenty or so. It was the talk of the summer program for a few days, until Reagan decided to quote some crazy teenager.”

He shook his head. “Really? A truck?”

“Angie, Jasmine, and Paige all saw it happen, and Cammie got there before the ambulance did, or thereabouts.”

“What next?”

“Oh, also ... Tom Brigham at Northwestern said to say hello to you.”

He shook his head. “Of course, you ran into him.”

I shrugged. “As Dean of Students, he was all over the press stuff.”

“I missed that. That makes sense, of course. This is going to be fun.”

“There’s one thing you might not know. I’m not sure.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll miss a couple of extra days in September. I’ve been invited to a ‘Youth Are Our Future’ conference in Washington, D.C.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all, but it is news. We’ll definitely talk about that. This is really going to be fun. I hope you don’t mind me embarrassing you occasionally.”

I chuckled. “Everyone in the school is going to hear about most of it all too soon, I’m sure. Well, maybe not the truck.”

“Strange but true. Another first. I can’t imagine another student where being hit by a truck is a minor footnote to their adventures.”

“I have a ‘What I Did For My Summer Vacation’ essay in Ms. Epstein’s class.”

“She isn’t going to have any idea what to do with you! Go get settled, while I greet a few stragglers.”

I found a seat in the front row, with Angie and Jas on either side of me, Jess behind me, Paige behind Angie, and Cammie behind Jas. Not a bad group to be surrounded by. Mel sat behind Cammie, and Cal and Andy sat beside them, of course.

The class itself was mostly routine, today. Tom passed out the syllabus (and helpfully mentioned that he tended to ignore it whenever anything came up), pamphlets for the CLEP Government and Economics tests, a 50-question questionnaire that was intended to place you on a two-axis political spectrum (conservative to liberal and authoritarian to anarchist), and another questionnaire which covered everything from parents’ names, jobs, and contact information, current college preferences and tentative majors, extracurriculars and achievements, and a bunch of other stuff.

Things took a slight turn near the end. Tom said, “I told Mr. Marshall that I was going to pick on him, and I will. While I doubt that any of you missed it, Steve managed to get himself in the papers over our most wonderful Prom last year, and then somehow got President Reagan to quote him over the summer, which prompted another set of articles.”

I saw some heads pop up at the mention of Reagan.

Tom continued, “He also wrangled an invitation to the White House for September, and I’ll expect a report on that, along with pictures. All that, and he somehow managed to avoid injury when hit by a truck at his summer program.”

More heads popped up.

“My point isn’t to embarrass Steve, but rather to make the rest of you think about how you would handle being in the limelight if you found yourself there. Every one of you has the potential to be in the limelight. Looking at this class in particular, I see future politicians, corporate executives, lawyers, judges, high-level athletes, actors, and so forth. Those of you who haven’t done so would be well advised to take classes in presentation skills or perhaps join Toastmasters. I know that public speaking is scary, but we have plenty of people in this room who will help you overcome that fear.

“All of you know my reputation. This class, by design, will help you pass the CLEP Government and Economics exams with high marks and thereby free up a couple of class slots in college. That, I hope, will be the least of the benefits of this class for you. I don’t see a person in here who couldn’t go through a college-level government or economics class and pass it without breaking a sweat, which means you can pass the academic content of this class without breaking a sweat. My real goal is to make you better learners and better leaders. That will take work and commitment.”

Everyone nodded. It also pretty much confirmed the meddling I thought I’d seen. Tom had put together a group of leaders and intended to push us. I hadn’t put it in those terms — that we could all pass what should be a tough honors class without any trouble — but he was right. We could. This class might fit the Debate and Drama models: the class itself wasn’t the goal, getting out there and doing the real work was the real goal.

It was going to be a fun year.

I was barraged with questions about the truck as soon as class ended, and spent the walk to the cafeteria (and part of lunch) explaining what happened, with plenty of assistance from Angie, Jas, and Paige and a bit more from Cammie. In the end, everyone wrote it off as simply ‘one of those things,’ which is pretty much where I was. Sure, the universe might have been sparing me intentionally, but it might have just been an interesting piece of physics.

I was pretty glad I’d skipped Physics II this time. Mr. Hoff would have had too much fun making us model the forces involved with the truck.

For all I knew, he still might do that. It just wouldn’t affect me. Well, not directly, anyway.

Computer Math felt akin to putting on an old shoe I hadn’t worn in years and discovering it felt weird. The class itself felt familiar, but then it should. I’d spent two years in this classroom during my first go-round, after all. Mr. Hannity had gotten a second-year class started this year.

That class would’ve been no more of a challenge than this one would be, so there had been little point in getting placed in it. Either way, I would take the Computer Science AP exam and pass. I could do that now, but it would be easier to explain if I’d at least taken the class.

Oh, there were plenty of great self-taught programmers, but many of them wouldn’t actually pass, simply because they didn’t have the theory. Mr. Hannity himself was lousy at teaching theory, but no one but me would really know that.

It just felt... off. No Gene, for one thing. He would have been in Computer Math II, but he hadn’t taken either this time. I had no idea why. We had never discussed it. Why would we?

For another thing, someone had apparently gotten on Mr. Hannity about his wardrobe. In my first go-round, Morty had endlessly mocked his polyester outfits. This time, he was wearing something that actually suited him.

He was, mostly, still the same person. I suspected that some of our endless challenges to authority had softened him up just a trifle, though.

He proved that he wasn’t entirely a new person when he stopped class halfway through to demand a hall pass from a hapless student in the hall. I had no idea why he did things like that. Even granted that there was a rule about hall passes, he had a class to teach. Why was he ignoring us to bother students in the hall?

He gave us an introductory assignment and turned us loose. It was just a simple program to print the integers from one to one hundred in order and sum them up, printing the cumulative total along with each new number (so: ‘1 1’, ‘2 3’, ‘3 6’, ‘4 10’ and so forth). That took me all of ten minutes, so I started adding bells and whistles: varying the starting and ending points, printing the cumulative product (a terrible idea, and I should have thought of that — it quickly crashed from exceeding the maximum supported value, so I dropped that), improving the formatting, and so forth.

I already knew there was going to be some trouble next spring. The State Computer Math competition was going to be held the same day as the senior trip to the Texas State Capitol. I could go, and I would probably win it for Memorial, but I would feel like a ringer. Someone with a Masters in Computer Science probably shouldn’t be competing in a high school competition, after all. That, and I wanted to go with my friends to the Capitol and have the experience I’d missed my first go-round.

Don Hannity would be annoyed with me, but I didn’t see myself compromising on this one. Let the kids who’d worked hard and gotten there legitimately have the fun and the glory. My Debate achievements were legitimately mine; I was a far better debater than I had been in my first go-round, and I hadn’t been a professional debater or even studied it in college. Computers, and math, too, were off-limits.

When I got to Drama, pretty much everyone was either talking to Jess (Angie, Jas, Paige, and Sheila) or staring at her. Steffie looked calm, but then she must have known Jess was joining our little troupe. She was hugging returning students, as well as those new students who felt like hugs. That would’ve been a serious rules violation in 2020, but it was just fine in 1983.

Perhaps lost in the shuffle were quite a few other new faces. Two were missing: Glenn Everett and Beth Green. Neither was a big surprise. They’d done what was asked of them but hadn’t really gotten deeply involved in anything.

One new face was nearly as much of a shock for me as Jess was for most people: Sam Myers. She gave me a hug when I came in.

“Hey!” she said.

“Hey, yourself!”

She giggled. “I decided to give it a try. Gymnastics is still really my thing, but ... this might be fun.”

“Welcome to the madhouse!”

She grinned. “My boss is in here. It’ll be cool.”

“If you need anything, just ask.”

“I will,” she said, still grinning.

Besides Sam and Jess, we had quite a few new people. There were no new seniors besides Jess, but we had three new juniors: Sierra Gutierrez, Sandy Scott, and Brad Welsh. Sam was the only new sophomore, but we had three new freshmen: Breanna Cooper, Kelly Glenn, and Leslie Schwartz.

Overall, this meant Drama was even more tilted toward girls. We’d had four girls and two guys leave (counting the seniors who’d graduated), but added seven girls and one boy.

The good news was that we’d added more than we’d lost. With eleven seniors graduating this year, Steffie really needed a good group this year. Hopefully, the fourteen who weren’t graduating would provide that nucleus.

In the meantime, Steffie would probably be looking at plays and musicals that had more girls than boys. Either that, or we’d either follow the example of Shakespeare’s day in reverse and have girls play guys, or gender-swap some of the roles.

I’d been looking forward to Debate all day, and it matched up to what I expected.

Meg greeted us at the door with hugs, at least for the returning kids. We had only one drop-out — Ron Becker, a sophomore last year, packed it in. I wasn’t completely surprised.

As with Drama, we were a senior-heavy bunch, if not quite as bad. We had no new seniors, which might have been a relief overall. Well, technically we did. Paige had joined us, but she was hardly new, just new to this class.

We had one new junior, Danny Bell, a slightly chubby guy that I remembered well from my first go-round. I remembered his sister Lori, too. She was one of our new sophomores. He was into race cars; she was into horses. Both of them had been fine debaters, though, my first go-round.

The other new sophomore was Natasha Grimm. I remembered her, too. She had been very good. Not Amit good, and probably not Jaya good, but very good. The thing was, she might be better this time because we all tended to make each other better.

One weird thing was that Natasha’s first-life partner, Ken Baxter, was nowhere to be seen. Either he was joining us later or he’d been intimidated by our success. I had no idea, and no way to get involved. In any case, she’d been much the stronger of the two.

We had three new freshmen: Kenny Lanier, who I remembered as a quiet kid the first time, and Paul and Penny Harrison, who I didn’t remember at all. They were fraternal twins and seemed both confident and perhaps slightly overawed.

We’d have to fix that. We were a great team, but we were a team, and everyone belonged.

Meg had posted the tournament schedule and ... there were surprises. A lot of surprises. She wasn’t playing coy with us this year, either. The differences between this year’s schedule and my first-life senior year’s was staggering.