"Fuck Math."

CDTM:

I never imagined I'd grow up to be chef. I never really had any idea of what I'd do for a living when I became an adult. As a boy I had a little journal my mother gave me that I filled out every school year. It was filled with questions to chronicle the years. One of the questions was "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Every year I answered something different. The only answer I can remember was when I printed the word "hero" one year. Not a superhero. Not Superman, or Batman, or Spiderman. Just "hero." During my teenage years I wanted to be a professional skateboarder. It was a wild dream. Tony Hawk was just starting to be successful. Before that being a pro skateboarder didn't mean much financially. I remember when it was reported Tony Hawk was earning six figures a year by riding his skateboard. That's the norm now for professional skateboarders. Many are making seven figures. It's become a big business. I was a pretty good skater but nowhere near good enough to turn professional. During high school I took journalism classes and worked on the school newspaper. I began to think I might like to be a journalist. I was also interested in politics. I served in the student council and was even an officer my senior year. I ran in an election and got to serve as the Mayor of my hometown for the day. I appeared on the local evening news. I thought maybe I would study law and journalism and pursue a career in writing and politics. I also began writing as a hobby, poems mostly and a few short stories. I applied to the School of Journalism at the local university (University of South Carolina) but was not accepted. Instead I was offered enrollment at a satellite campus of the University in a small town called Aiken. I attended the school pretty regularly the first semester but by the second semester my mind began to wander. I would go to the school library and study things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the classes I was taking. I wasn't serious about school. I did well in English and Philosophy but failed the rest of my classes. I didn't even go to them and was too lazy or absent-minded to withdraw from them. At the end of my first (and only) year of college my parents asked me if I wanted to go back the next year. Would I really apply myself this time? Did I even want a college education? They were worried sick about me and deeply disappointed. My answer was "no."

If I have heard this once I've heard it a thousand times: "Matt is very intelligent but he just doesn't apply himself." When I was in second grade I was asked to take some sort of IQ test. I took the test with several of my classmates. When the results came back everyone else was accepted into the gifted program at my elementary school but me. One day a week they got to leave school and go to somewhere else for the day's classes. I don't know what they did. I had missed being accepted into the gifted program by one point. I wish they wouldn't have told me that. I was hurt. I honestly didn't give a crap about school after that and that was in second grade! I'm sensitive like that. I was able to coast through my school years with barely any effort on my part. I made A's in the things that I liked, B's in the things that I somewhat liked, and so on. I hated Math, still do. I struggled with all my Math classes. Even after I had graduated from high school my parents made me take Algebra II again in summer school, something about I needed it for "college prep" or something. I passed with a B but when I enrolled in college in the Fall I had to take it over again anyway. I went to the very first class, sat in the back. Not even five minutes went by and I got up and walked out. "Fuck Math," I thought.

The summer after that failed year of college I took a job for a landscaping company that was within walking distance of my parents house. I had to be there at 6 in the morning. I was the young punk suburban kid on the crew. All the other guys were older, had families, etc. I worked 10 to 12 hours a day making $3 and something an hour. I walked around all day with a weed-eater in my hands. It really, really sucked. All of my high school friends were enrolled in well-regarded colleges and universities and I was humiliated and pissed off at my circumstances. The "real world" that teachers and parents and other authority figures had been warning me about was staring me in the face. I sought refuge in bottles of beer, sex, marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs. I also kept reading and writing. I decided that I would become a writer, that I'd chart my own course. I had always been unconventional and non-conformist but I was about to take it to a completely different level. I was scared shitless. I didn't want to grow up. I didn't want a house in the suburbs with a shiny new car in the driveway. I was full of piss and vinegar. I wasn't ready to take on the world. I was ready to drop out. And that's pretty much exactly what I did.