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What About This . . .? 12.5.2013

By Wayne William Cipriano

About midway through my junior year in high school I realized that I knew pretty much everything that was important.  There were some facts and things of which I was unaware but all the really necessary stuff was already in the bag.  I was going to quit school and seek to maximize my potential elsewhere.

My best friend had quit and I asked him how he had broken the news of his quitting to his parents.  He said he waited until his father came into his room one day and said, “I’ve decided I’m quitting school, and if you don’t like it, that’s just too bad.  I’m grown up and that’s it.”   If it worked for my friend I figured it would work for me.

When I got home that evening I turned up my radio real loud and when my Dad came in my room to complain I invited him to sit down.

“Dad,” I said, “you can’t see me as a kid anymore – I am a young adult now. I know what is happening and I know what I want to do with the rest of my life.  School is not part of that it’s just a waste of time, so I’m quitting.  And, if you don’t like it, that’s just too bad.”

You would not think an old man like my Dad could move that fast.

By the time the cast was removed I was almost finished with my junior year.  I passed everything, had a pretty good time at the prom, and my strenuously re-enforced appreci­ation for formal education made it almost certain that I would go on to get my high school diploma.  I have always been very happy and bene­fitted quite a bit by doing so.

Today, as I look back on the entire ‘quitting school’ episode, I am still amazed that an old man like my Dad could move that fast.