It was the spring of 1981. My Dad had just gotten a promotion and the family had moved from Virginia to California, only a few miles away from where we had lived in the early 70`s.

I was a Junior in High School, and was surprised to find that by California standards, I was only a few credits shy of eligible for graduation. Those few credits were harder to obtain than you would think, though. I needed a couple of Social Studies classes, plus a few mandatory gym credits. You heard that right, I was kept from graduatiing early mostly because of gym credits. I could thank California`s "progressive" educational system.

I knocked out the Social Studies classes by the end of the year, and completed 2 quarters of gym, which mostly consisted of me playing unsupervised and disorganized soccer with a bunch of other geeks for 40 minutes each day. The really bad news is that I was obligated to attend classes the entire day. I was looking at several hours of study hall.

Not willing to spend all of that time staring at the potheads and other miscreants that populate study halls, I took a bunch of elective classes; English Literature, Literary Criticism, and Marine Biology. That latter allowed me to go on multiple field trips to the local tide pools. That was a highlight whenever it happened.

I still had many hours per week to fill up. The school`s Calculus was apparently full, so I couldn't get into it, although I tried hard to convince the powers that be. I was never fully satisfied with the explanations I got as to why I couldn't take the class. Obviously I had the intellect to catch up the few weeks I would have been behind. Fortunately, there was one experimental series of classes to consider; Computer Science.

I took the introductory course and was immediately hooked. I completed the entire course in the first week, and the full 4 year syllabus in 2 months. I was then allowed to do independent study for the remainder of my time. I spent that time teaching myself and others Assembly Language, BASIC, Pascal and FORTRAN. I was in heaven. I spent every free minute in the lab, including all of my free time over the summer break.

Mr. Pease, my instructor and mentor even allowed me to collaborate with him on a major rewrite of the school's accounting and payroll system This was great experience and all counted as credits!

In the end I graduated with more credits than anyone in that school's history. I was, however, denied valedictorian status due to political machinations of the Calculus instructor. It seems he was grooming his daughter the whole time for the valedictorian spot. That explains a lot of the feeble reasons given for why I was denied a spot in his class.