As dawn rises, we’re back from this morning’s doggy-walk: out the door, around the park, through Lower Richistan, back up into the ‘Hood, and straight to the kitchen.
It’s too hot and wet for coffee. So we’re imbibing iced tea with what passes for breakfast. Ruby is flopped on the floor in her favorite place: where the fan blows “cool” (i.e., moving) air across the Human and the Dawg.
What an icky morning! Sometimes I think I would brain my father for dragging me to Arizona, if he were still living to possess a brain. I swear…literally!
Because…I was all set to go to UC Berkeley when he announced that whoop-de-dooo! He and my mother were moving to Sun City, a middle-class retirement “community” (gimme a break!) on the western edge of Phoenix. No one under the age of 50 was allowed. If you had kids, they had to be adults living on their own, or sent off to college.
My father sent me off to college, all right. Because I was an ultra-honor student in Southern California, he contrived to get me into the University of Arizona a year early. So…whoop-de-doo! It was off to Tucson for me, at the age of 16.
Sheee-ut! I was stupid enough to be flattered at getting accepted to a state university when I was still a kid. But…also stupid enough have have no clue what that would mean for my career prospects. His little triumph canceled my plans to go to graduate school at the University of California in Berkeley: once and for all.
Yes, eventually I did get the Ph.D. No, I never did get a really good job.
So…yes, I hate Arizona. Having matured enough to understand what dropping out of high school a year early to enroll in a second-rate university would mean for my career aspirations, I now do indeed hate Arizona and very much wish I’d been allowed to stay in school and go to UC Berkeley, as planned.
Everything I hoped for in a career went straight down the drain the minute I enrolled in the UofA. And though I managed to recover to some extent — thanks to marrying a high-earning lawyer — and though I did ultimately earn that Ph.D., none of it did me a damn bit of good, career-wise.
But who cares, anyway? She’s just a girl, after all…