College? Who Needs It?

I went to college for about a month.  I know! Can you believe someone with the writing prowess that I possess barely attended college?  I like to think I have life experience.  More so than people who actually WENT to college.  I worked.  I grew up fast.  I have always been highly intelligent, and entering adulthood before the traditional college student helped me become wise beyond my years, so to speak.  I'm not afraid to say that. I went through a lot as a kid.  My house burned to the ground 2 days before Christmas when I was 6.  My parents got divorced when I was 9.  I moved around a lot.  I had to make new friends over and over again.  My family never had an abundance of money.  I had to adapt.

I'm not saying by any means that other people didn't go through much tougher times, not saying that at all.  I didn't have to get my ass out of the ghetto.  My parents didn't die in a horrific car accident.  My mom wasn't addicted to meth.  My dad didn't come home drunk every night.....let me rephrase that last one, he didn't come home drunk every night and beat us kids with a serving spoon and throw a lamp at my mom.   My sister wasn't abducted and never seen again.  You get the idea.  I didn't have to overcome any terrible tragedies.   My parents were 20 years old when I was born.  They had 4 kids by the time they were 27.  My dad worked hard, and we did OK.  My parents fulfilled all of our needs, shelter, nourishment, love.  When it came to wants, or luxuries, not so much.  I'm not complaining.  I was happy playing wiffle ball and street hockey and tag wars with the neighborhood kids  We lived in a two-family home with a backyard in a decent neighborhood.  We were above the poverty line, lower-middle class, I guess you'd say.  I'm just making the point that nothing was handed to me.  Ever. I didn't have an allowance.  I had to sell Kool-Aid so I could raise $4 bucks to rent a Nintendo game at Blockbuster video or get a value meal at Wendy's.  When I needed glasses, my parents got me glasses, so I could see, but they weren't exactly the most stylish frames.  They were Steve Urkel frames because  they were literally the cheapest ones in the store.  Ask my brother or sisters, if you know them, they'll HAPPILY tell you how retarded I looked.

I had to mow lawns and deliver papers and work for my uncle's landscaping company.  There was no such thing as, "Hey ma, my friends are going to the movies, can I have $10 bucks?"  (For you kids out there, $10 got you into the movies and paid for snacks back then!)  If I wanted to see the movie, my friends bought tickets with money they got from their parents, and snuck me in through a side entrance.  My friends let me "borrow" money for a soda or a snack at lunch during school.  If nobody had any money for me to borrow, I stole shit.  Nothing major, mostly just candy bars or a Maxim magazine.  I jumped the wall at concerts to get in.  I snuck past security to get into football games, (before 9/11.)  I FOUND ways to get shit.  After my parents got divorced, we wound up living in towns where most families had much more money than us, meaning our friends had much more money than us.  They had things bought for them.  They got "help" buying stuff or were given money for taking the trash out.  I had to save up my own money by working if I wanted to buy a new video game.  I had to save $500 to buy my first car, a red, 1987 Plymouth Reliant hatchback.  It was a beautiful machine. Automotive engineering at it's finest.  I once had sex in it while driving down the highway, like Charlie Sheen did in "The Chase."  Off track, sorry.  My friends had their cars given to them as Christmas presents.  Maybe I didn't have all the coolest things or live in a big fancy house or have brand new clothes every school year, but growing up like that instilled in me the fact they I would have to work to get the things I wanted.  I would have to work HARD.

Wherever I worked, I climbed the "corporate ladder."  I am a natural leader, whether it was moving from a cashier to a store manager at a supermarket, to what I do know, managing dozens of other individuals in a high paced, high stress job, (most of the people I manage, by the way, went to college.)  I got this from my father, who is also a go-getter, type A personality.  He's a guy that people like to be around.  I try to be like that, and for the most part, I think I DO emulate my father in that way.  He likes to be in control.  He likes to be the boss.  He wants to be the man wherever he works.  When he played softball, he was the coach of the team and the president of the league.  I was a leader when I played sports in high school.  I want to be the man, the boss, wherever I go.  I'm good at it.  I have my dad to thank for a lot of it, but I taught myself a thing or two along the way also.

I suppose I have my dad to thank for the Irish drinking "gene" too, but that's a whole other story.  I'm not saying he's an alcoholic but...well, ya he's an alcoholic.  Not a bad one, like described above, just one who likes to drink a little bit mostly every single day, and then usually a lot on the weekends.  He likes to have fun, and I love that about my dad.  You only get one life, and as long as you don't do anything in excess and you're having fun doing it, and you're not hurting anybody, fucking do it.  I joke about the alcoholic thing, but it's a bullshit label.  We don't get plastered and drive home, we leave our cars at the bars and have someone drive us to it the next day.  We don't get in bar fights, (anymore.)  We don't act like pricks and piss people off and act obnoxious.  We have fun, and people have fun being around us, so I'm proud to be like my father that way.  I'm a lot like him when it comes to work, and a lot like him when it comes to play.

I'm not saying all this to pat myself on the back or be arrogant, though I am incredibly confident in everything I do, and I walk the line of cockiness in many different situations.  I'm also not stating all of the above to disrespect those who obtained degrees and worked DAMN hard to get them.  Having a degree is a wonderful thing.  It's an excellent accomplishment.  I hope that my kids go to college...but if they don't, that's OK too.  As long as they work hard to be the best people they can be, that's fine with their dear-old-dad.  I just reasoned at the time that I could start with a company, make money, and with my work ethic, do well and move up wherever I worked and in whatever profession I chose.  My thought was, "why owe money for a majority of my life in college loans instead of MAKE money right now?"  I never had money in my whole life, so when I finally had the opportunity, I didn't want to wait 4 years to go through school, THEN find a job, if there were any out there.  The opportunity I DID have was to go to work, find a job where I could move up, and not have to pay back college loans.  Remember the part of this now-too-long coming of age tale where I had to pay my own way for everything?  Yeah, that included college.  There was no "McRoberts children college fund" hidden away in some bank somewhere.  If I was going to college, I was figuring out how to pay for it myself.  Bottom line.

I tried it out though.  I went through the motions, I scored high on my SAT's, and got into a good school.  I just was told that that was the way to do things.  There are pro's and con's, like I stated before.  The way I worked it, since some of my close friends DID go to school, was that I was able to start my life in the working world, while STILL going to college parties, meeting college friends, and going on spring break vacations.  The way I saw the world, I was getting the best of both situations.

So parents out there, don't get discouraged if your kids don't go to college after high school.  Get discouraged if your kids turn out to be assholes, because if they DID, it's YOUR fault.  Just raise your kids to be good people, the rest will fall into place.  You'll be proud of them.  My parents are proud of me, and it's the best feeling in the world.  And there's no framed piece of paper in my office that's needed to prove it.