The Girl with the Dark Red Sedan, Who Parks by the Flag Pole

Surely I couldn't have made it out of high school without a few more misguided interactions with girls.  The first one actually wasn't necessarily bad.  By the time Winter Homecoming Dance came around again, I had attended (or "observed" to be more accurate) at least four of these events without asking anyone else to go with me, or asking any of the other girls there to dance with me.  I usually have a singular focus in that regard, and while at an intellectual level I was well aware that W was not necessarily better than any of the other options, the obstacle presented by the fear of rejection could only be overcome by the motivation that emotional desire brings.  Know that it would basically be the same isn't enough to get the job done.

At that dance, I somehow summoned up the courage and initiative to ask W to dance with me, and against all odds and expectations, she accepted.  So we danced for a song, a slow quiet one, so we actually talked to each other the whole time.  It was a fairly shallow conversation, mostly about the event itself, since she had organized it, but it was the most communication we had had since the day I asked her to the same dance the year before.  And then it was over, we parted ways, and life returned to normal.  Unfortunately that did not magically ease the tension I felt in regards to interacting with her on a daily basis.

As with the previous year, the next dance was the Sadie Hawkins.  I don't recall much of interest happening leading up to it until I was in the lab after school a couple days before the event.  W's car was parked right outside the window, which was unusual.  It was sitting there for over an hour, staring at me while I tried to work.  There was probably an opportunity here, I just wasn't sure how to take advantage of it.  Her sunroof was cracked open, so I got the brilliant idea to write her a note and slip it inside.  I composed something eloquent and passionately romantic, like: "W, Will you go to the dance with me? Mike" and headed outside.  I looked around but no one was in sight, so I casually walked up to the car and slipped it inside.  The paper had a slight curl to it, so it fluttered back and forth as it fell, over the wheel, over the seat, under the wheel... and under the seat.  It pretty much disappeared from view, completely under the front seat.  I was tempted for a moment to open the door and put it in a more visible spot, but even if it was unlocked, I was worried it would set off an alarm or something.  So I just walked away, laughing out loud at how screwed I was.  Maybe if I was lucky, she would find it just in time for the next dance.  Regardless, I just took it as God's intervention into the situation, since I doubt I could do that again if I tried a hundred times.  I never did find out what happened to that note, or when she found it, but it seemed unlikely to happen in the next 48 hours.

The last dance of the school year is of course prom.  I had never been, and it was supposed to be on a whole different level.  Part of me would have liked to go with W, while another part of me wanted nothing to do with the uniquely stressful parts of prom.  But something unexpected happened a week before the event.  Before our early morning leadership class, and therefore right in front of W, Amanda shouted across the room, asking if I would go to prom with her friend Katie, who was also standing right there.  I knew both of the girls, who were juniors.  Ironically Katy had a lot in common with W, at least on paper.  Same council office she had held the previous year, similar looking car, and actually parked in the same spot W usually had the year before, but she was definitely not W.  It would not have been unlike me, to pray to God the year before, asking to go to prom with someone special, without identifying her by name, only by description.  God has a good memory, and quite the sense of humor.

Have You Met Jack Grey?

Among other things I had to do senior year, we had Senior Project.  I tried to step a bit outside the technology hole, since everything else in my life was revolving around that at the time.  So I took up fencing, and did a report on the difference between Olympic Fencing, and Renaissance Fencing.  Olympic fencing is two people in white suits with little wires on a long mat.  Renaissance fencing can be two teams fighting over bridges and thru doorways, with swords, daggers, and a variety of other weapons.  It should be obvious which one I chose to pursue.  I spent about 9 months doing that, and only quit when I left for college.  I had been in a fairly unique group, and couldn't find anything like it when I moved.  I only recently discovered what happened to that group, and may rejoin them at some point.

That project was technically for English class, and I did a lot of other unusual things for that class as well.  Our best video work of that year was actually for that class, in place of book reports.  Steve was pretty good at talking his way out of writing papers, and I came along for the ride, along with a few others to work on a “group project.”  We did a legomation video combining 1984 with 9-11 (which was very current at the time), and another combining Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, with Star Wars.

A number of the senior guys got together and formed what Steve dubbed the "Gentlemen's Club."  For a couple of days we got away with playing poker in English class, since we had a pretty laid back teacher.  But once Steve got out the green felt table cloth, enough was enough, and we had to return to boring old class work.  I don't recall what all else the Gentlemen's Club did besides host a couple of BBQs on campus.  But that group combined with Thunderpaw did perpetrate one unusual feat.

I believe "Making Jack Grey" was originally the idea for a student film, about seeing how real you could make an imaginary person.  Instead of making the film, we actually did it.  Jack Grey was a pretty generic name, that doesn't attract much attention, and he didn’t have a memorable face.  We started off with an email address, and a lot of stories.  There were enough people in on it, that his name came up in a lot of places, and I don't recall anyone ever getting called out on it.  He was at any important event that happened yesterday, and everyone always just missed him.  I am sure he completed the STAR tests, probably multiple times, and turned in quite a bit of homework.  He was even rumored to be thinking about running for Student Council. (Imagine if he had won;)  My favorite part of that process was when our web manager announced at a Thunderpaw meeting that the only student who hadn't uploaded their web portfolio was Jack Grey.  I am not sure which was the bigger question: "why didn't we make a portfolio for him?" or "how could she possibly not know?"  But the crowning achievement was definitely when the principal mentioned his name at graduation.  Anyhow, that continued to by my online name when I wanted anonymity for years to come.  I just missed my 10 year high school reunion while I was traveling, but I wonder if he was there?

Starting Senior Year

My senior year was laid out to have a much less intense schedule than the previous one had been.  I had topped out in certain subjects, so there wasn't much left for me to take.  Besides my early morning leadership class, I had three challenging classes on one day, English, Gov/Econ, and Chemistry, which I had skipped my sophomore year.  On the opposite days, I had three less structured periods, starting with Thunderpaw, and followed by Senior Instructor-Calculus, most of which was spent in the Multimedia lab unless I was needed, and assistant to the network administrator, which was nearly all spent in the multimedia lab.  So I spent every other day in intense classes, and the remaining time running the operation of Thunderpaw Multimedia, which was just fine with me.  This led to my senior year being a lot more fun, and allowed me to produce some very cool projects.

That fall, I somehow ended up in charge of filming scouting and highlight videos for the Volleyball team, so got a chance to travel with them to other schools in the region.  It is amusing to look back at that now, as the guy who was uncomfortable talking with girls, on the bus with the team every week.  There were only four of five other seniors on the team, and I had loosely known them all four years, but I was by no means close to any of them, but they definitely spoke freely in front of me.  The things I learned by spending that much time with all of them were quite eye-opening, to my naive ears.

Fridays were very busy if we had home Football games, because I helped put on the Spirit Rallies in the mornings, and then the recording and broadcast of the games in the evening.  Obviously I had a behind-the-scenes role at the rallies, coordinating the event, while Steve was out front with the mic.  Luckily, there was a 50-50 chance that I didn't have any regular classes that day, which gave me the freedom to make that all happen.  Between the JV and Varsity games, plus cleanup, it usually made for a pretty late night.  This led to an interesting situation the night of the Homecoming game, after which the Senior Lock-in was scheduled all night, to decorate the gym for the dance the following evening.

The entire Lock-in event was run by W, who I still had awkward interaction with on a daily basis, so I probably wouldn't have had the courage to attend.  But via a long story, that God clearly had a hand in, I got locked out of my car late that night (my new key worked in the ignition, but not the locks).  After cleaning up all of the broadcast gear when the game was over, I was stuck at school, and the only thing still going on at that point was the lock-in, so I headed over to the gym.  Not only had W organized the event, but her parents were the ones supervising it.  I had no idea if she ever talked to them about things, but I figured her dad wasn't going to remember me from our one phone conversation back then.  I still have no idea, but it never came up.  W wanted streamers hung from the ceiling in the center of the gym to all of the walls, so I hopped in the lift, and was relieved to spend most of the night 30' above everyone, dropping rolls of streamers down to others below, after taping them to the speakers in the center of the ceiling.  I am known for being thorought, and was in no hurrry to come down, so the ceiling was quite covered by the time I was done.

Most of the students split at the first sign of daybreak, to head home and catch up on sleep, but I had to wait for my Dad to come up to bring me a working key.  Eventually there were only four of us left, and W's mom insisted on taking a picture of us together.  So somewhere there exists a photo of Me, W, Steve, and his girlfriend, all leaning against a table together, which is just amusing to me.  One of the only physical things that represent an entire aspect of that period of my life.

The Changes that One Day Can Bring

I was officially in the Leadership class my senior year, which convened at 7am, an hour earlier than most classes.  That meant I had to leave for school by 6:30 in the morning, which is hard to imagine now.  I usually listened to the radio on the way to school, but happened to turn it off as soon as I turned on the van one morning, going to school in silence, oblivious to the world at large.  When I got to school, I saw two teachers in the hallway crying, which is always unsettling.  My first assumption was that one of the students must have died in an accident or something, since that was the only other time I had encountered a scene like that.  Another teacher poked her head into the hallway and shared an update, "They hit the Pentagon as well, and one of the towers just fell."

That was a pretty shocking way to be introduced to the events of September 11th, which were actually drawing to a close by that point, due to the time zone difference.  Not that there is a good way to be introduced to something like that, but my imagination always assumes the worst when I hear fragments of detail.  I took a minute or two to confirm what was going on before darting into the multimedia lab to borrow a phone, and call my Dad who was still fast asleep.  "Hey, you might want to go turn on the TV," was all I could really tell him.  We didn't do much in the way of school work that day, mostly just watched TV for the updates as things progressed.  One of the first things that my friends and I discussed was how similar it was to the storyline of Tom Clancy's book "Debt of Honor," which ends with a 747 hitting the US Capitol building.  The possibility of other events from his books coming to pass was too much to think about.

I didn't find out until much later that the plane in PA crashed only a mile away from my Great Aunt and Uncle's house.  That one, Flight 93, had the most interesting story, as it involved resistance and heroism.  The passengers on that flight did not sit idly by, but took initiative and acted in the face of death.  They were unable to save themselves, but they clearly saved the lives of many potential victims on the ground, and gave Americans the closest thing to a victory that they would see that day.  Or they saved someone from having to shoot that plane down, and while the outcome would have been the same, the resulting fallout would not.  The unique thing about Flight 93 was that it involved "normal people" who were just going about their business, trying to get to California that morning, but never made it.  I have been in that position many times myself.  They never suspected when they arrived at the airport that morning, that they would find themselves in such a difficult position.  Nor would they have imagined that their flight being delayed by twenty minutes would have such an effect on their destination.  And I wonder if they would have believed, if asked ahead of time, that they would have the courage to confront that situation head on, when it arose.  Nor would they expect to be banding together as a team, with a group of total strangers, engaging an unknown foe, in the gravest of situations.

Today marks the eleventh anniversary of that tragic series of attacks, and I was at both the Memorial at the World Trade Center and one in a Pennsylvania field last week, so it has been on my mind of late.  As I left the Flight 93 memorial, a tour bus full of elderly couples pulled up, and they were getting off.  Most of the museums and memorials I go to are for events long past, most frequently WWII, due to my grandparent's involvement.  In those places, the older people around have the perspective of remembering the events in question, as opposed to just reading about them like I do.  In this case, this event belongs to my generation, and they would be as well served to ask me what it was like.  My class was the first to graduate after that event, and those from it who joined the military, did so knowing that they would see actual combat.  They were the ones who were just finishing training and entering active duty when we invaded Iraq 18 months later.  It was probably the most significant individual historical event of my life up to this point, and I tremble to imagine the possibility of it being surpassed in the future.

The Last Summer Before Graduation

That summer before my senior year was fairly busy, and I did a variety of different things.  Besides two weeks at Philmont, which I already mentioned, I was selected to go to a leadership camp in Tahoe.  It was called RYLA, and was put on by the Rotary club.  It was composed of one student from each high school in northern California & Nevada.  Most of the students who attended were selected based on their involvement in leadership at their schools.  So there were a bunch of student body presidents, team captains, and yearbook editors there.  Technically, I was slated to lead Thunderpaw Multimedia the next year, as the manager of operations, but really I was sent because I was a top student.  So I spent the week with 150 really outgoing people, which was quite an experience.

It was a very busy time, where the group was formed into a band, a choir, a drama team, and produced a daily paper, and a "yearbook" for the week.  I got the opportunity to learn all sorts of new things.  For example, I got to see someone light their own fart, as well as to experience how bad it smelled trying to try to sleep in that cabin afterwards.  I also became a lot less sheltered in a very short period of time.  Then on the last evening, my cabin decided that I needed a little help “loosening up.”  So after the nine of them pinned me in the bathroom, (with no small amount of resistance) and spiked my hair, they stole my notebook, and turned it in as “lost.”  That usually required one to sing in front of the group, to recover whatever item they had forgotten.  So to my horror, I had to go up in front of the group at dinner, but they weren’t as sadistic as they might seem.  Once I was up there alone for a panicked moment, they came and joined me, which eventually led to my whole cabin singing “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” to all of the girl’s cabins.  (A bit different than Baptist summer camp)

We also wrote letters to future selves, which our counselor, a 50 year old Rotarian, mailed to use around graduation the next year.  Mine had four basic goals, graduate top of my class-check, get into a prestigious university-check (even if I didn’t attend one), earn rank of Eagle Scout-check, and have a talk with W.  Not “go out with W” or “get W to be my girlfriend,” just a very reasonable goal of talk with W.  And of that list, it would seem to be the easiest task by one hundred fold.  But that is all a matter of perspective, depending on one’s strengths and weaknesses.

That same summer, I also did manage to do my Eagle Scout project.  Instead of some outdoorsy, "scouts" type project, I rebuilt the computer lab at my old elementary school.  Most of the staff members had turned over, including the principle, in the three years since I left.  That make it a bit more awkward than I was expecting, since no one knew who I was.  HP had donated a bunch of computers years before, arranged by the Doves, parents of one of the students there.  The computers had never really been setup very well, so I rebuilt the whole room, and networked all of the systems together.  I modified the desks, ran cables under the floors, and setup a server in the adjoining room.  I all went relatively well, but I have no idea if it ever actually got used to its potential after we were finished.  The computers were old when HP donated them, and that had been many years before, so hopefully they have been replaced by now.

The previous summer I had done an internship in the IT department for the County Dept of Public Works, which had been an extremely boring experience, writing feasibility reports when I wasn't troubleshooting problems on outdated equipment.  That next summer, when I wasn’t at RYLA or Philmont, I worked in the IT dept at Coherent, a laser manufacturer.  That was much more exciting, as they had lots of modern new equipment, and I spent a good part of the summer testing "Wi-Fi" wireless network products, which were the newest thing at the time, with a set of ten laptops.  I was also working with two other students from my school, who were friends of mine, so that made it a lot more fun as well.  We got ourselves into and out of all sorts of interesting situations.  One time we got ourselves locked in somewhere, and we were able to get enough wireless signal to hack my boss’s computer, and create a folder called: “Can you come let us out of the inner courtyard?” on his desktop.  From crazy lunch outings to weird conversations with other employees there, it was quite a time.  The comparison between the two experiences convinced me that I never wanted to work for a government agency again, and ten years later, I have no intention of altering that resolution.

How does one Decide Where to go to College?

The later part of my junior year was also the primary time that I was looking at colleges to attend.  My original plan was to go to the Air Force Academy, since my career goal was to be a jet fighter pilot.  I abandoned that idea at the end of my sophomore year, primarily because I realized that I didn't want to join the military.  It wasn't the level of commitment that was required that put me off, so much as discovering how much the military deliberately breaks you down to rebuild you in their image.  I committed to not doing that, when I stopped taking Spanish after two years, since they required three for admission.

My intended major at that point was computer engineering, which left me with a variety of high-end engineering schools to choose from.  I also had one other school that kept getting brought up by a variety of random family and friends, Cal-Lutheran.  But I had pretty much dismissed it because they didn't even offer my major, and computer science is not the same thing.  I didn't even understand what engineering was at the time, because I had never dealt with anything outside of it.  Pretty much all of my relatives on both sides of the family are engineers, and that system of thinking was all I had ever known.  So I didn't understand the significance of eventually choosing both a non-engineering school and major.

I of course had to apply to both of my parent's alum a mater schools, even though I had zero intention of attending a school much larger than a thousand students.  There was a new program starting in Boston called Olin College, which I applied to be part of the inaugural class for.  They were originally looking for the top 100 students in the country, but that was eventually cut in half to include students who had graduated HS the year before and waited, and I didn't make it into the final selection.  I have no doubt I would be a completely different person if I had gotten in, but I am okay with the way things worked out.

Over the course of those last two years in HS, I began to more fully understand that while I was never going to be held back in life by my academic and intellectual abilities, my social and interpersonal skills were sorely lacking.  So focusing on growth in those areas would probably be more useful that further "studying," but how does one go about deliberately growing in those areas?  Not by going to an engineering school, that is for sure.  Cal-Lutheran had a 3-to-1 girl-to-guy ratio, and was relatively easy academically, with lots of extra-circular opportunities and options.  That was probably a much better place for growing in that regard, but at what cost?  Hardly prestigious on the resume, and I probably wouldn't learn nearly as much in my classes, but is that what I really needed?

They did have a very unique multimedia program at the university, with a high degree of freedom, and I was coming from an even more unique program in high school.  So to my parent’s initial dismay, I shifted from planning to attend a high-end engineering school, to going to a liberal arts college.  The work I was doing in my multimedia class was a factor in that decision, but not so much as my recognition that my qualifications to attend an academically prestigious school were the exact reason I didn't need to do so.  Academic pursuits were not the aspect of my life that needed the most investment in further growth and development.

Why Does it Matter?

The significance of this whole series of incidents is not in what could have happened with W if things had gone differently.  I have no doubt that she was not the "the one" for me.  I remember knowing that in my brain at the time, but my rational mind was no match for emotions, hormones, and other new feelings in those individual moments.  The significance of what happened lies in how it continues to affect my thoughts and decisions related to relationship development and romantic pursuits.

Looking back I can see how that situation drilled two nearly mutually exclusive principles, deeply into my subconscious.  The first was "No matter what you do, its not going to make things any better" which led to long periods of passive acceptance of the situation.  But I was constantly confronted with situations that were made awkward by the fact that couldn't bring myself to interact with her in any relaxed way.  This brought me to the obvious conclusion that "It's better to try to do something, even if it doesn't work, than to do nothing at all, because that never works."  After a few misguided attempts to improve things, I would be frustrated enough to return to my earlier feeling, and the cycle would continue.

These two rational principles, still weigh to an irrational degree, into any serious relationship based decision that I am faced with.  I can always tell after the fact, which one I was over-valuing at the time, because hindsight is 20/20.  But even with that in mind, when confronted with a new situation, I never know which one I need to be better compensating for.  At this point, after years of time wasted in high school and college, passively waiting for ideal opportunities to present themselves, I am inclined to deliberately favor taking initiative.  But that can lead to its own series of challenges, and still must be balanced against discretion.

Although the situation with W was a serious distraction for a long time, there were other things going on in my life at the time.  For example I took the SAT on the morning of that first Homecoming dance I went to.  That is not a good time to take an important test, and while I did alright, I showed significant improvement when I took it again two months later.  When reviewing my records the next year, my Scoutmaster called to ask how I improved my score by 160 in two months, since he was trying to get his son into Harvard.  "Easy, just be distracted enough to totally botch the first one."  That’s probably not what he wanted to hear.  But taking all of those tests set me up for the next big decision, choosing where I wanted to go to college.