I don’t even know why. I wouldn’t call myself a loser in high school but I was not far from it. I was pathologically shy starting right around 7th grade. I pretty much put the walls up and cut myself off from people with occasional exceptions. I had two or three friends in 4 years of high school. I embarrassed myself by clamming up around cool people who I wanted to impress.
I went out for soccer one year but I didn’t get into all the games. In fact, usually the only time I played was if there was one minute left in the game and we were ahead by 1000 to 1. Then the coach might put me in. I sold pot my senior year, I was known a little for that.
But I rarely talked but now for some impossible reason I’m 58 years old, (diagnosed when I was 19) and I’m looking back at being employed for the past 30 odd years. I’ve almost always had a car.
Being a drug addict for four years is not something I set out to be but at least, as my dad told me, I got to “live in the fast lane” for awhile. And now I’m clean. But I don’t know how I’ve done anything. I’m usually no leader for sure. I’ve always been odd man out for most of my life. Never fit in. Average looking, average strength. I’m smart I guess, I almost have my degree.
But at jobs if the ask you to do something you don’t say “no” you just do it. So I drove a dump truck at my first job out of the hospital, I unloaded trucks for years when I was in my early thirties and outworked all the teen agers and twenty somethings. I was about the only worker who didn’t drive the forklift though for quite awhile but I finally got on and taught myself. I was even a park ranger for two years. If I have to do something I just do it. I guess I’m a testament for perseverance and not giving up.
And I’ll save all the fun and many fun experiences and places I’ve been for another post.