Things Man was not meant to know...

...about his college days.

        As part of the SSEDP Class I'm to apply for admission to the graduate program that is the core of the whole affair. Part of that means sending in a transcript to the Stevens' Institute. Not sure what grades from 21+ years ago will mean to them today but I asked Arkansas to send them a copy. While I was at it I requested a new one for myself. My original transcript is somewhere safe.

        It showed up yesterday and I read it. At first I saw no surprises. There were the grades I remember and then there were the Ds. Ds? Yup, there were two I recall in Calculus. I took the classes again for a B, but they are not the problem. The problem were the others I found scattered about my grades. I have no memory of any of these. Some are even in my core curriculum and that I don't remember either. And they were never made up. That is even more odd. It implies I did not know or care about them at the time which is scary all by itself. I would never have dreamed I'd be so cavalier about such things.

        Normally you would expect an "A-ha!" and recollection would hit of that rough semester, the difficulties I had with a particular project or a final. Nope. Nothing. No remembrance of even opening my grades after the semester to be shocked at a D. Amy asked if this was selective memory. Obviously but this is a level deeper than not wanting to remember, it is a complete emptiness where the disappointment should at least take up the space.

        Have any of you ever experienced that? It is truly scary.

        NASA is not likely to reconsider after 21 years so that is not the fear but I am disturbed. What else have I forgotten? Not simply not recalled in a great many years but is utterly wiped from my mind? My guilty conscience immediately asked, "What else have I done?"

        Even as I write I can here Rick and Scott thinking of things to "remind me of".

        "Hey Kev, do you remember those two nursing students we met in Van Buren?" The answer is no and perhaps I don't want to know. ☺

        This reinforced a recent conviction that whatever people did, said or belonged to in college aught not to be held against them years later. For instance:
        "You call yourself a patriot? You were a member of the Communists of East Southwestern State."
        "And you were banging co-eds like a screen door in a hurricane, Mr. Family Values."

        It seems best to let sleeping dogs lie and not hand them bones from other peoples' closets.

        Then two other ideas hit me. The first is that my Dad who never actually finished his degree, never made a fuss about these particular grades. Presumably he thought he had no place to criticize. This moment of humility should remind me not to berate the boys when they have their academic issues. Sadly, it may be another two generations before a Tones father can with full composure and self-righteousness criticize the grades of his children. ☺

        Now the mystery of where the boys got their fine academic abilities is solved: It is from Amy. Tell Mom, thank you, Boys!

        The second idea is a bit more sobering. If I was living in such a state of dis-consciousness how did I avoid doing something pyrotechnically stupid? Apparently God does look out for fools and drunkards (safe on two counts) and I must have had a set of friends that kept me out of serious trouble. It takes a village to raise a child? Maybe, but it does seem certain you need some guys from there to restrain the village idiot from time to time.

        Therefore let me say Thanks be to God for putting good, caring people between me and my worser self. And thanks to all of you for body-checking me when I wanted to do foolish thing. Even if she was cute. ☺

        Ad Astra Per Aspera,
        Kevin