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Sigh. I tell that story as an adult about the firecracker, and I am embarrassed by it, but...I can’t look away from it because it is part of me.

I wasn’t bored by school. I was terrified by it.

When I think about being a kid, those memories present to me with a kind of golden glow...they seem that way now, and I like it that way. That is how I want to remember them.

But back then, they weren’t golden at all going through them.

Every day was filled with potential peril, and I hadn’t learned enough of life to navigate it boldly to take it on. Back then, I would be completely reactive to events, a prisoner to them, not as if I were driving the events like a horse-drawn chariot instead.

I hated school. Absolutely despised it with a white hot burning passion. I was nearly crippled with anxiety when I was in school. I couldn’t learn anything.

And every report card was like a Presidential Election seems to me now.

My dread at having to hand my report card to my parents at the end of each semester was a cycle that was peculiarly familiar to me in later years when I began to seriously view the Presidential elections. As soon as one election was done, the eyes are already on the next one on the horizon. So it was with my report cards.

As soon as I handed that report card to my parents and endured the short aftermath, the next deadline for the delivery of the Report Card could pop up like a blazing beacon on the horizon, and it would begin to oppress me even before I walked out of the room and away from my parents. Like the Eye Of Sauron, I could feel it get closer every single day with the passage of time.

From handing in that report card, I got not even a break of a minute before I began to feel an ache in my gut again at the prospect of all those future “F”, “D”, “C” grades (with some occasional “B” marks in unexpected classes like Biology or in something wholly expected like gym) at the issue of the next report card four months from that instant.

And then four months later, the report card day would come and I would have to take my report card home to have it signed. My dad always signed all of our report cards.

One year, in third grade mine was so bad, I tried to forge my father’s signature on my report card. As I recall, this was when I was still learning how to write on that yellow paper there each line of writing had three lines on the paper, an upper solid, lower solid, and dotted middle. And we were writing with those thick, cylindrical pencils at that time, not the yellow painted #2 pencils.

So you can imagine how well that went with the teacher was reviewing the report cards that we returned to her. The next day, she called me up in front of class and said something like: “Forgery is when someone tries to present a fake thing as a real thing. Such as a signed name. Forgery is a crime. You can go to jail for twenty years for forgery.”

Another year (in fifth grade) I simply hid the report card in my mattress, and when asked, simply told my parents I didn’t get that one day. Oddly, they didn’t say anything other than a “Oh.”

And that is what terrified me most: That look my parents gave me, and my mother uttered that quiet “Oh.” They were angry, no doubt, but it was worry that was painted on their faces. And that made me feel just awful. They were worried about me to the point they didn’t know what to say, and that frightened me. If they had yelled or given me the belt, that wouldn’t have frightened me. But the look on their face did.

That meant they were worried I couldn’t learn, and that did frighten me. And it added the pain I felt for causing them that worry.

Anyway, fast forward to my senior year. Again, my dad had retired and we went to yet again another school system, and I did not fit in any crowd. Didn’t make any friends. And I had a Southern accent that attracted attention in that New England high school. As a result, I ended up by default falling in with the Misfits. There were seven or eight of them, and they had lunch together every day. And that was where I ended up. They were socially awkward, didn’t belong, and they had that in common. I did too.

Now, I look back on those times in childhood before graduating high school. I felt so much mixed joy and pain during those years, and when I got older...I found I could understand it so much better now than I had at the time back then, and there is something wonderful about that.

I thought I was so unique and special in my awkwardness and misgivings as a young person, but...as I aged and gained life experiences, I realized I was probably about average. Each of us lived in our own personal silo with little way to see into the silos that other people were in.

The point is, we all go through our lives in a state of disarray, and things we struggle with. One of those things we all struggle with is the opposite sex.

It is funny to consider that we boys believed that girls were shallow because they had limitations on just what kind of guy might be able to go out with them. A good looking guy, a jock, a musician, or a bad boy. But not those guys like us who belonged to the Misfits.

And it makes me laugh to think that we weren’t much better-as I recall, if a girl was good looking to me, not much else mattered. Yeah. We boys were pretty shallow.

I wonder about the question sometimes-as my muscles ache and arthritis creeps up on me-what would it be like to be 18 years old again, with an 18 year old body?

I think about how cool it would be to rear back and throw a football forty yards with no pain. To run. And I like the idea. A lot.

And in the same instant, I ask the question: “Can I bring my current brain and experiences back with me?” And I realize that, if the answer is “No”, then...it is a no-go for me. I would love to have that 18 year old body, but...I just don’t think the constant pain of learning unpleasant things and feeling like you are blindly bumbling your way along is worth it.

No. I would keep my brain now, even with the aging body I have now. I could never be 18 again if I had to learn those lessons again.