My senior year of high school was very tumultuous time in my life. And very exciting. I was about to attend Sunset High School: A night school for dropouts and fuckups. Great. 😠
I digress. My junior year started two years earlier with me transfering to Bonanza High School. I had gone to Western High, with kids that included friends from kindergarten all the way trough. I didn't know how lucky I had been.
Bonanza was a completely different vibe, and I hated it. It was full of uppity, spoiled well-to-do types. I mean instantly you could see the difference. Everyone stood in little groups of 2-3 people, gossiping about everyone else. When I would try talk to a classmate they would look at me like "Who are you to dare speak to me?". And I tend to speak my mind and love to poke the bear. 😋 But that's another story...
Anyway, I take school very seriously. I have never struggled in school and have always been among the top students academically. At the end of the first semester I had good grades. A's and B's. And a total of 6 absences, mostly for days I ditched school with girls. I liked girls too. That's when I was informed that I was hereby expelled!
You see we were allowed 18 absences, but only 5 unexcused. I had 6 total. 6 unexcused. I couldn't believe it. I set up a meeting with the principle to explain that I wanted to go to school, and he still refused to let me stay. I was in shock.
But you see I was playing in a metal band and I knew I was going to be a rock star so I didn't need school. My plan was to graduate first, but so be it.
By the time the next school year started I had decided not to go back. "O. T. Factor" was going well and gaining momentum. To top it off, we were running a rehearsal studio renting rooms to 17 bands and making money hand over fist. I was living at the studio and helping run the biz. It was awesome!
A few months go by and I get a knock on the door. It was my father who hadn't told me he was coming.
He was working in San Jose, CA setting up and overseeing the poker room at Bay 101. We talked all the time. But my Mom had called him to tell him his son had dropped out of school and living in a warehouse off the strip. Which was basically true. My Dad hopped on a plane, shocked and justifiably concerned to hear of my irresponsible behavior.
So I get a knock on my door. When I opened the door and saw my dad I was so excited. "Dad! Come on it" I exclaimed, as I rubbed the cobwebs from my eyes. I wearing a rob, having just got out of the shower (yes we had a shower,2 bathrooms, kitchen, hell we had a Crap table; all in our studio). Plus the band equipment all set up with a sound system and still had plenty of room to have guests.
"Are you hungry?" i asked, knowing he could smell the bacon and eggs I was frying up for breakfast. LOL.
Needless to say, when the shock wore off my father was very relieved by the situation he was walking into. While my mother was 100% right, it was not the desperately low place one would infer by the data given. LOL
So after breakfast, while drinking the fresh coffee i brewed up, he offered me a deal. If I went back and finished school, he would buy me a car. I love my dad and took the deal. I wanted to graduate.
The amazing thing was, we went and bought a car that day. He knew I would do what I said, and this way I had a car to get me to school. We found a Chevy El Camino, so I could also move band equipment (in hindsight I do not recommend an El Camino if you plan to use it as a truck. My next car, a Chevette, was much tougher). Good car though.
So I enrolled in Sunset High School...(TBC)
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