Faith

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After several years of rarely going to church my life soon took a turn for the worse. Gary had dropped out of school the year I entered the 10th grade. He was doing a lot of carpentry work for his father and decided to enroll in the carpentry program at Hinds Junior College. He had told me about how much he loved not to have to deal with high school anymore and got me to thinking it may be a good move for me as well. I was still working for his father from time to time and felt some training in that field could only help me down the road. He told me that he had just built a duplex close to where I was living and that his mother had agreed to rent it to us if I wanted to move in with him and share expenses. He said that his dad had a night job in downtown Jackson going on that would last for quite a while. He said that I could ride with him to school and also to work. I knew that if I did this I could not take the car with me. My father had purchased the car primarily so I could drive my sisters and me to school. So I fully expected him not to let me take the car with me if I moved out of the house. So during Christmas break of my sophomore year I decided to tell my parents my plans. My 16th birthday was coming up in a few weeks. One morning, I went into my parent’s bedroom and took $105.00 out of my father’s wallet (which was the cost of tuition) while they were still asleep. I wanted to make sure he had the money before I even gave it a try. When he heard me and woke up I told him that this money was all I wanted for my birthday so that I could quit school and go to Hinds Jr. College and take up carpentry like my cousin. I told my father that I was moving into a duplex with Gary and could ride with him to school every day. I guess my father knew trying to reason with me was a waste of time and let me have the money and I went to Hinds and got registered. I remember when I went to school to drop out the counselor tried his best to talk sense into me, but his words were falling on deaf ears. I had already made up my mind and there was nothing he could say that would change it. Unfortunately, because I was registering late I was not able to get into carpentry and had to settle for brick-laying. I was told if I would do that for a while I could transfer to carpentry later in the semester. Because I did not have a GED I was required to be co-enrolled in GED classes which I went to every day.

Because we now had rent to pay I went to school all day long then worked at nights for my uncle doing construction work. After a semester of bricklaying all day and working full-time at night reality set in and I decided that it was time to return to high school. At age 16 this was just more than I could handle. Plus I really missed playing sports and hanging out with my friends. The next year I enrolled in school. I had to repeat the 10th grade which was not a big deal. But what I found out after school started back was the beginning of the end for me. I was told because I had quit school the year before that I was ineligible to play sports. This devastated me because playing sports was a huge part of why I decided to return to school. I went to classes this last year but my heart was just not in it. I was still living with Gary so there was no parental supervision around. I would get stoned just about every morning in the parking lot before school. Then I would go to shop class and play paper football through the whole class. The next period was typing and I would typically lay my head down on the typewriter and wake up with keys impressed across my forehead. Next period was math. Now I loved math and actually had an A average. During this period we would go to lunch and I was pretty much done for the day. Oh I still had English, History and Biology but I rarely ever went to class. And when I did I never even tried to do my school work. Of course this would be short lived and I just decided to quit again. Without sports there was just nothing to keep me in school anymore

Check back tomorrow for Chapter 3, Entering Adulthood

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