Lee Gets a GED

It's good to have things back to normal here, and please don't laugh when I say that like everyone else does. It just comes off as passive-aggressive.

We've all been a little shaken up by Lee's massive head trauma and following period of insanity where he thought himself a beloved children's book author, but things are settling down again since we held him down and held an "intervention of fists" as I like to call it. Lee soon came back to his senses, except for the minor oddity that he wants to get his GED now.

I told him he was fine as is, though in complete honesty jumping on the treadmill a few hours every week wouldn't kill him—now Camembert, hoo boy, that would kill him, yessir. Lee, however, has no interest in exercise, or hygiene, I'd guess, but does have an overwhelming desire to complete his formal education.

As near as I can figure, Lee dropped out in the fourth grade over accusations of retardism. It was a hard thing to deal with for a boy of his age, 15, and there was apparently nothing to back up such accusations, but kids and certain teachers and the janitorial staff can be cruel, as the expression grows. If I had been thought beneath my intellect, to my face, it certainly would have stifled my ambition to complete school. But not Lee! Well, yes, Lee, for a long time, anyway. But not forever!

Apparently this GED thing is the equivalent of a paper saying you finished high school, except I don't know why anyone would go to high school in the first place if you could just do this. A lot of 8th graders I know would be jumping through hoops, like my Oscar party festivities, if they knew this was possible Four years of degradation and clique infighting and learning your place at the bottom of the social hierarchy can be prevented with a test a monkey could pass (I've held independent studies) and only a few are taking advantage of it? Without saying anything offensive, there would be fewer Columbines if this idea were promoted better. That's all I'm impulsively stating as fact.

From what I can gather, this GED test is just a series of questions about history and simple math and a lot of English, the language of England and abroad countries. If you come within a certain margin of correctness or make threatening eye contact with the test administrator, you pass. How easy! Not for me, perhaps, but for anyone who knows trivial details of information that American high school students know. Still, I guess if a test is too arbitrary and demands more than you're willing to give, you can always do it the old-fashioned way: Show up in classes once in a while in an American public school and create havoc until the apathetic teacher passes you to get you out of the educational system. I believe the president himself relied on this manner to get his degree.

Still, it's good for me that I started work so long ago my resume is long, and therefore difficult for employers to read. They skim the most recent job history and never noticed I only dabbled in professional schooling. I am smart, way smart, like Camembert tells me when I seek affirmation from him, but I lack the precise papers that declare it so. Who knows? Maybe I'll go back for my GED some day, when my self-worth has sunk so low I feel I need another person to validate my existence with a rubber stamp. Either that or I'll get a rubber stamp for Camembert.

Until then, Rok Finger gets by on street smarts: I know what street I live on, what street you take to get to the commune office, what street goes to Arvelyn's house for my nightly peeping, and what streets are known as "sidewalks" and can't be driven on. Some lessons in life you learn the hard way.

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