A healthy disregard for authority

Through most of my high school career, I was a fine, upstanding young woman. I was one of those kids the principal or guidance counselors would call on if they needed a model student. I'm not proud, but it's the truth.

Early in my senior year, I wised up. A healthy, cliche case of senioritis. I quit anything and everything, I started questioning teachers and especially administrators. No, actually, I didn't start questioning - I just became downright rude.

Fast forward 15 years. I was a reporter for the local paper, covering the schools and the Board of Ed. I had learned enough not to be rude, but I still didn't trust the authorities. Or, shall we say, I had developed enough savvy to not to take them at face value. I questioned, I probed, I pissed them off. I think they didn't trust me - because I refused to eat up what they were serving.

Fast forward another 9 years, to last week. There I was, in the high school auditorium listening to the principal and the guidance counselors tell me what to expect from next year, when Wolfgang enters high school.

I was totally confused. On the one hand, I felt like it was 1986, and I found myself looking around for someone to make offhand comments to about the questionable intelligence of the speakers. On the other hand, I felt like a reporter and wanted to take out my notebook, write down the administrative spin and then ask the revealing question.

But I knew that I could do neither. I was not an obnoxious high schooler or an investigative reporter.

I was a parent. Of an almost freshman.

And it killed me to admit that those administrators did a good job. I bought what they had to say, hook, line and sinker. Damn them.