not part of the “college track” program. Later when I applied to some colleges for possible admittance, I realized that a person’s overall cumulative high school grade point average was most important concerning the four major subject areas and not the decreed difficulty of the courses taken.
One evening I discussed plans with father to go to a nearby disco with a friend. Father stated that 10:00 pm was late to go out and that I should stay home. I remarked that my friend was already on the way to our home and we were going out but would be home by a 1:30am curfew. Father stated that he advised against me going to this disco, but we proceeded anyway. I enjoyed discos for the dancing and socialization and these establishments provided me with an alternative to viewing bad movies. We left the disco that night to find that my car was nowhere in the parking area. I began to panic, believing my car to be stolen. I could not call the police because I was underage for this disco activity and it was illegal for a sixteen year old to be driving at night unless it was for employment reasons. I telephoned home and explained this situation to father, who did not seem very concerned. He drove to the disco to bring us home. On the drive home, he seemed aloof and a bit jovial as I was upset and ranting about my “stolen” vehicle. When we entered the driveway of home there was my parked car. Father and mother had driven to the disco with a spare set of keys and drove the car home. I thought father was wrong as he should have stated definitely that I was not permitted to go out that evening. Much later, I realized with my own teenagers, that due to evil forces within the society, parents lose much authority over their children that may necessitate the reliance on sometimes complicated and damaging psychological punishments or no punishments, rather than on emotionally inspired truthful confrontations as would be expected in a good, moral society.
This year, I had an engaging and enthusiastic teacher for the subject areas of sociology and anthropology. In the sociology half of the course, I recall viewing a popular film about Eskimos involving a Caucasian sociologist who researched and spent time living among this group of people. An aspect of Eskimo society depicted in the film was the sharing of wives between these people, to promote friendship relationships. I recognized this practice to be adultery and could not understand how the society could function normally under these arrangements. At the same time, some students in the class thought this to be an interesting idea worth pursuing. The study of anthropology was largely based on the evolution of man. The teacher advised the class repeatedly however, that there were gaps in the evolutionary theory.
Occasionally, a teacher would be absent from school, requiring a substitute teacher to be assigned for the day. The behavior of some students in class became horrendous under the authority of the substitute teacher. Some students tried to unnerve the teacher in as many ways as possible. I empathized with the substitute teacher’s predicament and later thought that perhaps a review test to consume the entire class period, should be made available for a substitute teacher to administer to students in a classroom, where an assigned teacher is absent for one day.
Retrospective: Teenagers are permitted to view violent and other movies of gross immorality but are not permitted in a disco until eighteen years of age. I graduated high school with a cumulative grade