This is about expectations. At the end, I’ll explain why.
When I graduated from college I was pleased that my parents let me study what I wanted. I worked in Detroit for a while, went to California, and then was accepted at law school. At the same time I was offered an entry-level job with the FBI either in Los Angeles, where I applied, or at headquarters.
The discussion with my parents–my father mostly–lasted two minutes. I remember it well still: it was on the ornate circular front steps at our home in Grosse Pointe Farms and I must have been following or chasing for it to have occurred there. I lived in the other part of the house in a tiny room built for servants.
There was no question about it. I would move to D.C.
That, I think, is where my expectations began. I left home for good. And my education was just starting.
But it is not as if it started there; it is more or less just a jumping off point. I disliked South Quad, my economy triple, and the entire University of Michigan so much that I left there directionless. I wanted and needed a place that paid attention to me, one that was smaller and personal. Still, I got by with Summer jobs for sustenance and a motorcycle for transportation and graduated in four years with majors in psychology and anthropology. My GPA was terrible and it was the best I could do; both the programs were number one in the country at the time.
My parents never knew, or asked about, a single course I took. Same goes for the advanced placement courses I took in high school, athletics, social functions, and you name it. At one point my parents offered a gesture of the car I drove in high school, only to never say another word about it when the found out it needed repairs. That is the way communication worked.
To this day, people call me gifted. I don’t know my IQ and never have. I also never knew I had AB blood, the rarest type, until I began to donate it.
This was hidden and private, in blog-speak. Like most things here it is unfinished. There is no point having anything here that is private.