There was a time during my last year in our one room country school when I said I wasn't going to go on to high school. I know it was fear of the unknown and even though I had an older brother who was doing just fine in that place of higher learning, I doubted I would do as well.
Mom had a younger cousin, not much older than I, who had opted for her 8th grade diploma as the end of her formal education. I used her as an example for why I should do the same. My parents didn't agree. Perhaps because they had never gone any further than the 8th grade. Oh, Dad did attend one semester in this building but never returned for the last half of his freshman year. Family lore was that he was already smarter than the teachers - or at least thought he was.
Recently I commented that I feel I have been very lucky in my life. To be sure, there have been ups and downs, sadness as well as happiness, but all in all, my life has been good, with few regrets.
Every once in awhile I wonder what it might have been if I had gone beyond my secondary education, hadn't let the dreaded math and science courses deter me?
But, as Ann Landers said: "Nobody gets to live life backward."
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