Orange Glen High Intro

Before I start talking about Orange Glen High School I left out a short (but strange) La Jolla story:

One evening when I was trying to go to sleep there was a loud crash in my room... I turned on the light and discovered that the "cookie tin" full of change that I kept on my dresser was now on the floor...
I was way beyond freaked out... I suppose I might have shoved some stuff around on my dresser earlier in the day and pushed the tin almost off the edge (without noticing) - and then a tremor (also unnoticed) knocked it to the floor... But still... I was so not OK with stuff spontaneously falling off my furniture :-) You know - all that business about objects at rest remaining at rest unless acted upon by a net force - at least that's what Newton's First Law claims... So I spent hours lying there wondering where the h*ll the net force came from... I'm certain there was a rational explanation - but I'm still not quite sure what it was :-)

Enough of that - on to Orange Glen:

I remember my first day at Orange Glen pretty well... The first thing they did was spring an IQ test on me... Now - if I'd had any inkling that was going to happen I would have skipped the morning shot of gin :-) But I scored a 138 anyway... I didn't quite hit the genius mark (140) but that was totally cool... It seems like having an IQ much higher than that is more of a curse than a blessing anyway... I've often thanked my lucky stars that I was born the "dumb one" in the family :-)
BTW: I should point out that the counselor didn't tell me my score - that would have been against policy... My paperwork was on her desk. Back then I had 20/10 vision and I've always been able to read upside down just as well as right side up - so yeah - I figured it out :-)

OK - now this is funny: The first thing the counselor did was look at the IQ score and immediately launch into her spiel about the school's honors program... As she flipped through my records she talked about what a great program it was - I was really going to enjoy it - homework was optional, etc, etc... Then she saw my GPA - stopped - and said "But none of that applies in your case..." I couldn't help but laugh - I'd been sitting there just waiting for it - the suspense had been killing me :-)
She spent a couple of minutes trying to get a handle on the disparity between the IQ and the GPA... I recall mentioning that (in my opinion) the point of grades is to measure conformance rather than performance - plus I didn't really feel the need to prove anything to anyone... She didn't even freak out - I was quite impressed by that ... And she actually acknowledged that there was some validity to my position... As my sister used to say: "She was making obliging noises" :-)

Aside: I used to catch all kinds of crap from teachers and counselors about not applying myself or living up to my potential... They'd invariably say "I don't get it." And I'd be like "Yeah - that's because I'm smarter than you..." OK - I never said it out loud - but I really wanted to. I'm such an arrogant @ss... But I really did enjoy playing the "underachiever" - and I digress - sort of :-)

Next - they had one of the "brown-nosers" (you know - the students who help out in the office) give me a tour of the campus... I probably would have thought she was cute except her hair was too short (think "Carol Brady") and she was just so dreadfully normal...
I made the mistake of asking her about the "weed" situation at the school. She was visibly shocked so I quickly told her that I didn't smoke (true at the time) - I was just concerned because it had just been so common at the schools in San Diego... She assured me that Orange Glen was not that kind of school... I pretended to be relieved :-)

Yeah - the whole process had come as something of a pleasant surprise. If I hadn't been so arrogant I might have even appreciated it... At both Mission Bay and La Jolla they had just tossed a schedule together, handed me a map and told me to get lost - which I promptly did...

I spent almost an entire school year at OG... There were certainly some jerks there - I'll get around to them eventually - but most of the students at least tried to be nice and (on the whole) my time there was quite tolerable...

Unfortunately - I was still in a really dark place when we first got there - just barely hanging on... But it did get better for a while - before getting worse again :-)