I found a few things in my “memories” box besides bad writing. Like these achievements on the road to where I am. Nothing all that special, really, but it did trigger remembrances of days long ago. I’m just posting here as a way to preserve them.

I guess, technically, it was middle school or junior high. Those were the days when I started learning my smart-ass ways. Like this encounter:

The other incident that is seared into my memory involves my 7th grade math teacher, Peter Boothroyd. I’m sure he’s dead by now so I won’t begrudge him. Much. I was being my usual smart ass self in class one day and he called me out on it by saying “Keep it up McCrarey and you’ll wind up selling jello out of a truck like your father”. Ouch. Well, as it turns out I did for a time wind up working in route sales (sandwiches, not jello). But I’m proud to say that I went on to bigger and better things, beyond anything a pea brain like Peter Boothroyd could have imagined possible. Hmm, I guess maybe I am still a little bitter.

Another teacher kicked me hard on the shin when I joked about his fat belly. Hmm. Maybe I was more of an asshole than a smart ass.

I was definitely high for most of it. I did well in my journalism and creative writing courses, did okay in history, and pretty much sucked at everything else. Mainly because I was preoccupied with sex and drugs and rock-n-roll. I had to take some night courses at the local community college to earn enough credits to get that diploma. I wrote about those high school daze here.

After high school, I floundered around in some dead-end jobs, fathered a child, and got married. Then in 1976, the Postal Service hired me as a letter carrier and thus began my career in government service. I delivered mail in Anaheim, CA, Prescott, AZ, and Fort Smith, AR, before I received this letter in 1985:

Another promotion a couple of years later took me to Columbia, SC. I decided it was in my best interest to earn that long-delayed bachelor’s degree to reach my full potential as a government bureaucrat, so I enrolled at the University of South Carolina.

USC added some degree requirements that I found unfair and overly burdensome, so I transferred to a smaller local college.

And the rest is history. Still, looking back from an end-of-life perspective, it was quite a ride.