YOU WILL FAIL (Brian Katcher)

 

The other day a fellow teacher spoke to me about a student she was worried about. An eighth grader, he was highly intelligent. However, he didn't apply himself, and his attendance was so poor that he was in danger of having to repeat the grade. But when she told him he needed to buckle down, he responded that he didn't need school, as he was going to be a rich soccer player as an adult.

This warmed my heart. And it made perfect sense. As a professional athlete, he'd have money to spare, and wouldn't need the basic math and reading skills he was struggling with. But then the teacher told me something that hadn't occurred to me: what if the kid didn't make it as a soccer star? Then he'd just turn into a twentysomething with no education or marketable skills. I'll admit, the idea gave me pause.

It also made me think of my own dreams when I was a young man with a heart full of dreams and a trunk full of spray paint. When the possibilities were endless. I wanted to be...a drifter.

Perhaps I was taken in by Hollywood. But it would have been such a glamorous existence. Riding my thumb to other cities, bathing in national park restroom sinks, jumping freight trains, working as a carny, selling my plasma for ready cash. 

Unfortunately, I didn't have the grades. And one night, I realized what I needed was Plan B. 

Fortunately, it was a false alarm and she wasn't pregnant, but the experience got me thinking. I couldn't live off my looks and charm forever, and eventually they'd change the rules about how long you can stay at the all you can eat buffet. The human cannonball correspondence course was taking forever and you could only sell a kidney so many times (and your own kidney even fewer). 

And that's when I saw the sign on that dingy diner: HELP WANTED, COOKS, YOUNG ADULT AUTHORS, AND DISHWASHERS

The rest, as they say, is history.