December 27, 2023:
No no no. That's not the right moment.
It should instead be 7th grade, with the decision not to continue in the gifted program.
I had leverage; I could have negotiated. No shop classes: wood, metal, electrical, drafting. No gym class. Pure waste.
Instead: the necessary languages for later. French, German, Latin, Greek. Spanish, to participate fully in local culture.
Everything else — literature, history, philosophy — I could handle on my own.
I'll join your shit program on those terms. Only those. Doing my best to ignore you and your effete beret and your ridiculous mini cigars.
I had no idea then what leverage is, or what leverage I had. Nor any notion of negotiation. But we're not talking the boy of twelve, we're talking a return to that moment with every current experience, memory and skill.
More. A job. At the music store in the Quad, the Vox dealer. Get a parental signature, use the wage and the discount to buy instruments. Start a band. Have more sex. Avoid the drugs.
There's the road forward.