I had taken honors history throughout high school and managed B’s. I achieved this by collaborating with Dave Krieg and we would actively cheat off the smart students and share with each other the copied right answers. The great part was any wrong answer was never our fault. On one paper in Ms O’Donnell’s class I plagiarized an Encarta article, handed in the paper, she graded it with a “see me”, and then I avoided her for the last 6 weeks of the school year. My point is that I wasn’t honors material.

Senior year, I was placed in Mr. Bortz Gov’t AP class with actual smart students. I’m talking 1600 SAT students. This was a fish out of water scenario. They were all accepted into Harvard and I squeaked into Pitt. Mr Bortz was a retired principal who was wasting time teaching a Gov’t class. I was more his muse than his student.

He knew we were seniors and his teaching attitude was laid back. It was one of my favorite classes because Jodi Smith was in the class and I got to sit next to her and she was on the ripe side of development. One of my high school achievements was when I showed her how to get past one of the harder Snood levels.

Snood was toward the end, but there were actual educational events transpiring throughout. In a debate on cloning, I was arguing the con side, I lost 23-2. Not knowing who was the original was my main argument and I stole that from the Calvin and Hobbes Duplicator.

In a presentation on homelessness, I put on my posterboard a picture of a homeless guy and the quote, “all I’m looking for is a piece of ass”. The teacher said, “you have the ability to make the class laugh, which is very important and will take your through life…the presentation however, was not very good.”

My shining moment was the one test I got 100% on. I was one of 2 students (Mike Fried being the other) to do so. It was a 50 question true or false test. Being dumb, as I read through every answer I would have been guessing on nearly every question. So I mustered up the strength to answer “false” for every answer. I had nothing to lose and this seemed like a decent strategy considering I was the dunce in the class. It worked.

I share this class because I’m not that bright. I’m not extraordinary in any manner at all when compared to my peers. My one trait is that I don’t settle. I continue to educate myself. I continue to improve. I continue to want to be better. That’s what my next post will be on after I have finished reading Atlas Shrugged. Consider this my joke post until I start smacking you around with philosophy you won’t read about.