Thursday, October 23, 2003
If you never hear from me again there's good reason i.e. never incur the legitimate wrath of a seventeen-year-old-daughter. If you caught my October 16 blog in which I posted her Political Process test for all to examine, take, and pass within 50 minutes, I have since lost her test she lent me to blog. This is bad, bad, bad because she needs it NOW in order to study for a mid-term. I KNOW I put it in a place somewhere safe between home and our bed-and-breakfast at which we were staying during floor sanding. But where, oh where is it....
Daughter got her SAT college entrance exams score back. She did well but it’s all meaningless today. Not even a perfect 1600 or valedictorian status is a guarantee you'll get in to the college of your choice. She, hard-as-she-is-on-herself, is not as pleased as I am with her results. Were I to have to take the SATs today I might have matched her in English but would have been lucky to get a score of 50 on the Math portion. Meaning that I wouldn’t even get into a local Community College these days. Suffice to say daughter's transcripts, SAT scores, and lunar/star alignment have sealed her fate one way or another. I say to her 'Relax honey. With your Austrian-Terminator genes, you will do well wherever you go. Unfortunately college recruiters have saturated her with the idea that it has to be a certain college or otherwise she has failed.
Apropos fate. This is hard to write. My town has lost another teenager in the course of one month. I didn't know well the girl who was the age of my 19-year-old-son and died last month in an alcohol-related car accident. But I did know this boy, age 18, who died the day before yesterday and was in daughter's senior class. He was funny. Strawberry blond and freckled. I car-pooled him to dozens of soccer games. Parents nice. Maybe the father was a little hard on his two boys. He coached soccer. Mother a devoted volunteer and community advocate. A beautiful house out on the most exclusive parcel of land available in an otherwise exclusive town. The freckled strawberry son dealing drugs. A fight. Exasperated parents who issued an ultimatum: 'Get out -- we are unwilling to be a part of this anymore.' The son who leaves with his friend. Completely wrecked, they stop by the side of the rode to sleep. She wakes up. He doesn't. At least that's the story from the kids who knew he was dead before the police ever found him. Cell phones. Supposedly OxyContin -- same stuff Rush Limbaugh was addicted to. They call it hospital heroin. Life goes on. EXCEPT when you lose your child. Except when the last thing you maybe said to your child was Get Out. It doesn't go on. A good friend of mine with four kids said to me once, 'Strangle them in your kitchen if you must. But don't ever throw them out of the house..." I will go to the funeral this afternoon with about everyone else in town. What the hell can you say. And by the way, this town's kids don't have any alcohol or drug problems...
Daughter got her SAT college entrance exams score back. She did well but it’s all meaningless today. Not even a perfect 1600 or valedictorian status is a guarantee you'll get in to the college of your choice. She, hard-as-she-is-on-herself, is not as pleased as I am with her results. Were I to have to take the SATs today I might have matched her in English but would have been lucky to get a score of 50 on the Math portion. Meaning that I wouldn’t even get into a local Community College these days. Suffice to say daughter's transcripts, SAT scores, and lunar/star alignment have sealed her fate one way or another. I say to her 'Relax honey. With your Austrian-Terminator genes, you will do well wherever you go. Unfortunately college recruiters have saturated her with the idea that it has to be a certain college or otherwise she has failed.
Apropos fate. This is hard to write. My town has lost another teenager in the course of one month. I didn't know well the girl who was the age of my 19-year-old-son and died last month in an alcohol-related car accident. But I did know this boy, age 18, who died the day before yesterday and was in daughter's senior class. He was funny. Strawberry blond and freckled. I car-pooled him to dozens of soccer games. Parents nice. Maybe the father was a little hard on his two boys. He coached soccer. Mother a devoted volunteer and community advocate. A beautiful house out on the most exclusive parcel of land available in an otherwise exclusive town. The freckled strawberry son dealing drugs. A fight. Exasperated parents who issued an ultimatum: 'Get out -- we are unwilling to be a part of this anymore.' The son who leaves with his friend. Completely wrecked, they stop by the side of the rode to sleep. She wakes up. He doesn't. At least that's the story from the kids who knew he was dead before the police ever found him. Cell phones. Supposedly OxyContin -- same stuff Rush Limbaugh was addicted to. They call it hospital heroin. Life goes on. EXCEPT when you lose your child. Except when the last thing you maybe said to your child was Get Out. It doesn't go on. A good friend of mine with four kids said to me once, 'Strangle them in your kitchen if you must. But don't ever throw them out of the house..." I will go to the funeral this afternoon with about everyone else in town. What the hell can you say. And by the way, this town's kids don't have any alcohol or drug problems...
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