Imagine if you will, that you are 15 years old, told that you can spend as much money to pursue a college degree as you needed to and that this state would continue until you graduated. But then afterward, it all goes away. What would you do?
I worked the system. I made my 4.0 GPA and enjoyed life. I started at Stanford with Chemical Engineering, then Columbia with Chinese, Penn State with Business, and then, finally, I came back to Oklahoma and Oklahoma University with a combination of Computer Science and Philosophy. I loved my life. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a party animal. I mean I had to keep up the grades. My dad had said, “Books, Tuition, Housing (not necessarily campus), food, clothing, transportation, and any travel costs would be paid for, along with a spending allowance of up to 15% of my food, clothing, transportation and housing costs. Which meant the more I spent on the four, the more money I got to spend. There was an oversight provision, the lawyer had to make sure the receipts were real, and the lower my GPA, the lower the percentage I earned, over 4.0 earned 15%, 4.0 earned 10%, 3.0 earned 5%, 2.5 earned 3%, and anything lower meant I was out of school. Only at Stanford and Columbia was I able to earn over a 4.0. But I had roommates, I had friends, I played games, I joined guilds, my life was good.
I kept transferring so I wouldn’t graduate. College credits don’t transfer, particularly when you switch majors when you transfer and aren’t really trying to get them too. I liked my life! It was great, but I swear I put in as much time figuring out how not to graduate as I did selecting my courses by the final years! But everything must come to an end. I’m not the type to kiss and tell, so I’ll just say, it may not be a great idea to sleep with your Philosophy Department’s Dean’s nineteen-year-old daughter, on his couch, in his house, when he’s supposed to be out unless you make sure he’s actually out. Suddenly, some former Yale Chinese Language Philosophy class credits became transferable to my major and, surprise, I’ve graduated, no need to thank us, congratulations and goodbye.
I came home, bearing my new Philosophy Degree with my Computer Science Minor. I came home because I was broke and, well, home is where they have to take you when they show up. My mom was in Ireland pursuing some Oil and Gas Leases when I arrived.
I came home and buzzed myself in at the gate. Derek the head of security (ex-Seal, Delta Force, a total badass, my former martial arts instructor) drove up in a golf cart and let me in. They change passcodes regularly so I didn’t know the current one. Our house is pretty big. Not baronial estate size, but about 12 rooms, a ballroom/big empty room, a living room, servant’s quarters, kitchen, 14 bathrooms, a conservatory, a library, a home theater, a (believe it or not) bowling alley (previous owner, don’t ask), a pool, tennis courts, and, of course, a guest cottage/small house that I got when I graduated from High School. It was two stories, about 1500 square feet, next to the pool and tennis courts on our hilltop in a little town (just outside of Tulsa, OK) called Sand Springs.
Anyway, I said, “Hey.”
He said, “Hmm!”
“Mom in?” I asked.
“Nope, Ireland,” he replied and then handed me a Sat phone. This constituted a large conversation between Derek and I. Don’t get me wrong, I love him, he’s like my father, just an extremely quiet, stoical, lethal one.
“Hello,” I asked, a little bit hesitantly.
“Hi honey!” my mom said. “Congratulations on graduating. I know it was accidental, Dean Chalmers contacted me. But still, congratulations are in order!” (Dean Chalmers who may or may not have a 19-year-old daughter.) “But all good things must come to an end, I think you rode that horse into the ground! What’s your plan now?”
The thing about my mom is that she is smart. I think she is smarter than I am. And she likes to plan. Everything is planned, everything is scripted. I plan, but I’m not obsessive about it, you know? I knew right then that I was in trouble. If I didn’t have a plan, I was going to have to adopt hers. She lived by the “Lead, Follow or Get OUT of MY WAY” rulebook. Unfortunately, I’d been away long enough that I was rusty in dealing with her.”
Thinking fast, I said, “Well I’m planning on going to grad school.” “Hmm!,” I heard her say. “No, I don’t really think that works for me. I’m thinking you need to do more on your life.” I know it’s weird, isn’t it, she always says, ‘do more on your life,’ instead of with. It comes down to the way she views each person’s life as something that is created by each of us, instead of something that we are given. She believes strongly that we are only given one life and we are required, even obligated, to create something magnificent from it. I’m not sure who she plans on getting the final approval from since she doesn’t really seem to believe in a God or gods, but since when do beliefs have to be congruent? Anyway, I said, “Huh? What do you mean?” And she said, “Honey, I’m about to head into a meeting with the head of Ireland’s Petroleum Affairs Division, so I don’t have time to talk now. I left instructions with Derek. I have another meeting with his equivalent in Russia and following that one with Greece so I won’t be back until mid-June or early July, so we’ll talk then.”
“OK,” I replied. “Love you!” and then I handed the phone back to Derek. He took it, said, “Yep,
“I don’t suppose, …” I began already planning on having Jackie stay in the main house when he said, “Nope, not happening. Your mom’s a little disappointed with your 10-year college plan.”
“Hey,” I said. “It’s only nine and I got over a four-point GPA.”
“Doesn’t matter, Chief. I’m not the one you’ve got to persuade, she is and right now, she isn’t. You’ve got ‘til Monday morning.”
Wow! Tough crowd. I’d already parked the car – a little black BMW i3, it’s our planet take care of it!, so I started dragging my suitcase off towards the guest house.
“Hey Chief!” I heard, “keys!”
‘Oh man,’ I thought. ‘This is getting serious.’ “What, mom told you that?” I said.
“Yep,” he said. “She said Plan 3A, which means take back the car and the credit cards when you leave. Here are the keys to your car,” he said, tossing me a set of two keys on a keychain with a dyed red rabbit’s foot. I told you, she is a planner and ex-Special Forces guys understand logistics and strategy. I am so screwed! ‘Damn you, Dean Chalmers!’ I thought again for maybe the fiftieth time.
“My car?” I asked.
“Yah, the Caddie!” he answered. ‘Lord,’ I thought. ‘She is mad.’ Remember the gold Caddie my dad left me? Well, it was officially my new ride – a 20-year-old gold Cadillac Coupe de Ville. I went up to the guesthouse and threw my suitcase into my bedroom and then put on my swimsuit and went out to the pool. My cousin Jackie was there.
She sat up from the chaise lounge she was sun tanning on and said, “Hey Monsoon, you heard?” That’s the name that I go by mostly now, Monsoon. My real name is Maysoon Alacrity Seebring, but Jackie couldn’t pronounce it when she was younger, so it became Monsoon. It kind of stuck for some reason.
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“Yea, out by Monday!” I said.
“I’m sorry!” she said. “I could talk to Aunt Jane.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t bother. It wouldn’t make a difference, she’s pissed and I don’t have a plan, at least not yet!” And for the rest of the day, she and I talked, drank some beers (at least I did), she’s only 16 so she didn’t get any. Diet Coke for her.
That night something weird happened. I was lying in bed, it was late, after 2 in the morning, when in the bottom right corner of my right eye, a small blue dot appeared. It blinked, not fast, but not slow either. It didn’t matter if my eyes were open or shut, I could still see the dot. It didn’t really block my vision, I could see through it fine, even if I looked directly at it and then past it, it stayed present regardless. It blinked there for about three minutes, then finally vanished. I was in bed at the time, trying to come up with a plan, when it occurred. It looked a little like one of those things that TV stations put down in the corner of your TV set, a little animated, see-through item that you could either focus on or ignore. Naturally, I was a little nervous. I mean what could cause a blinking blue dot to appear in my eye? I went to the bathroom and checked my eyes using the mirror and a flashlight, but it didn’t seem visible from the outside. Even while I was looking at the dot, blinking merrily away down in the bottom of my right eye, I couldn’t see any evidence of it in my eyes. No light was being generated inside my eye, visible through my pupil, nothing was visible on the outside of my eyeball either. I wasn’t sure what to feel when it finally stopped: afraid, happy, if happy, happy for what reason, if afraid, afraid for what reason? So, I immediately got on the internet after it quit, after about 10 minutes, an article showed up on Slashdot.org, one of my favorite sites, with the title, “Did anybody else see a small blinking light?”
I stayed up late that night browsing the net – the Interweb my mom calls it. After about 20 minutes stories started showing up on the local news sites, stuff like “Man Robs Quick Trip (a local convenience store) After Being Convinced the End of the World Is Nigh!” and “Trucker Rams Loading Dock When Distracted By the Dot.” That seemed to be what everybody was calling it. … the Dot. Surprisingly there weren’t that many fatalities, nor crimes, nor large scale incidents attributed to the dot. Up in New England and in Seattle a couple of ferries rammed their docks as their captains quit paying attention to their boats, but that seemed to be it. There were a couple of incidents in other countries – France almost had a nuclear meltdown at one of its power plants when the engineers quit paying attention and started talking about the dot, Japan and Spain almost lost a couple of high-speed trains, and Australia had five bus wrecks, but only about five people lost their lives, which is kind of surprising when you think about all of the planes, trains, and automobiles that were being operated at the time. The next day, the President called a press conference along with some of the other significant world leaders: Russia, England, China, Japan, France, the list went on and on. He stressed that there was no reason for alarm, that it took place equally around the world (taking the wind out of the sails of the Born Agains in this country who were claiming it was a sign of their favored “Godly” status) and that no one was harmed and that our scientists were working on an explanation and should have results soon. ‘Yawn,’ I thought. ‘Leave it to a politician to make the end of the world routine!”
About the biggest event that occurred was that Iran and North Korea threatened to bomb the US, Israel and, for some reason, Albania. But everyone ignored them, pretty much like usual.
I went to bed around 4 o’clock in the morning and got up the next day at around 2:00 pm. As I looked out over the back yard, I decided that it was time to get things started, so I threw “An End of the World as We Know it” party. I invited all of my friends from OU. My friends from the Washington High School IB program, the University School for Gifted and Talented Children at the University of Tulsa, the staff of my mom’s house, my former tutors, everyone that I could think of that I knew in this part of the country. Surprisingly a lot of them came. It was also a little surprising how people were acting at the party. It was a weird mix of hedonism and scholarly discussion. I remember at one point watching a group of my former high school friends (all older than me by about 10 years) playing topless volleyball in the pool, while another group of us was busy deconstructing the apocalypse, tracing the historical antecedents to the belief, whether or not zombies were even possible, the Mayan Calendar, the revelation of St. John the Divine, you name it, it was brought up and thoroughly discussed. What was really weird was how interchangeable and respectful of each other’s differences the two groups were. I remember watching my friend Traci sit down (topless) on a chaise lounge and join our discussion for about 30 minutes before hopping back into the volleyball game. Food was everywhere and so was alcohol. Everyone had a good time. I think the final people left the next day around noon. I wondered about inviting Jessica Chalmers but decided not to. I figured that she had already capsized my boat of good fortune once, no need to pilot my boat back into that rock again.
The next day, Thursday, I decided to start firming up some plans. I took the Black Amex down to the ATM (well actually ATMs) around town and was able to withdrawal about $10,000. Not a huge sum, but enough that I could live on it for a while. Mom wouldn’t miss it and it would make a huge difference to me. I also took my 20-year-old gold Cadillac Coupe Deville down to the dealership and had them go over it with a fine-toothed comb. The owner of the dealership was pretty stoked about the car, offering me $15,000 for it right then. It had less than 2,000 miles on the odometer. My dad had bought the top of the line model for that year, leather seats, full electric windows, door locks, a cassette player, cruise control, reclining front seats, etc. Hey, they might not sound like much by today’s standards, but for the time they were money. I thought about it, but couldn’t let go of the car. I mean, it was my dad’s. They promised to have the car fully serviced and detailed by Monday morning, so I left it there and Ubered back to my mom’s place.
Derek met me at the gate again with the phone in his hand.
“Hey, chief, mom wants to talk to you,” he said, handing me the phone.
Her first words were, “A party? Naked volleyball? You threw open my house and I had people puking in the bushes?”
‘Uh oh!’ I thought. ‘Better go straight into apology mode!’
“I’m sorry, mom!” I said. “I realize that it got a little out of hand, but not too bad. Only one person threw up in the bushes and I think everybody kept it to topless. It really wasn’t as wild as all that. I remember seeing Derek and Clancy (the butler) and Jamonica (the maid) sitting around the pool talking about the Apocalypse. It was kind of laid back, really,“ I said.
“That may be,” she said, “but it’s my house. Did you ever think about that?”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d mind,” I said. “Honestly! I just graduated and then there was the dot, it’s a big house, really kind of designed for this kind of thing, and for the most part, we kept it outside around the pool. I didn’t think you’d mind, really! We just served barbeque and snacks and people weren’t drinking that much.
“You didn’t think,” she started off. ‘Hmm!’ she kind of laughed. “I was thinking that maybe I was a little harsh on you, that maybe I needed to be a little kinder, gentler, but I’m thinking now that I was right in the first place. You need to grow up, honey. You are 25,”
“24” I interjected.
“You are 24 years old, almost 25, no job, a philosophy degree, and no life plan or goals. I think I was right, you need to be out of the house on Monday. You need to grow up. I love you. I always will, but I need to see that you are moving forward in life, moving in a positive direction. You still need to be out of the house by Monday noon. ”
The rest of the week passed quietly. I stayed in my room or hung out at the pool with Jackie, actually, her name is Calah, but I call her Jackie because she looks just like Mila Kunis or Jackie from “That 70s Show.” We tried to work out what I was going to do, but other than grad school nothing seemed appealing. I got a new cell phone since I wasn’t sure if mom was going to let me keep the old one, well, she bought this one (the black Amex again), but I signed up for the payments. I rented a Post Office box and started applying for grad schools. I was pretty sure that I could get back into Stanford or MIT if I wanted too. I also contacted OU, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford to see if I could get an Associate’s Degree or complete my degrees there via the internet or by transferring in some of the credits I’d gotten from other universities. I was not a hundred percent sure, but I thought that with my GPA, I might be able to swing it. Monday arrived and I pulled my suitcase out of the guesthouse where I was met by Derek.
“You gonna be OK, Chief?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied, handing him the black Amex, my heart breaking.
“Need a ride?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got to pick up my car, at Riverside.”
“OK, let’s go,” he said and we hopped in my, well not mine anymore, black BMW i3 (him driving, sob!) and took off. When we got there, he dropped me off in front of the service department, made sure that he had my new cell number and took off back for the house. I paid $160 bucks for the service and got behind the Caddies wheel and then it hit me, I had nowhere to go. It was in this state of mind that I hopped on the highway and wound up at Mighty Max.