A Life in Four Colors Part Forty-Eight

1969 was the year when I began to stumble across the path to my future.

First off, I really felt like I had found my place with friends who truly understood me. I had a close friend who shared most of my interests (Gary Steele), I had a new friend who also shared most of my interests and who had the advantage of being a beautiful girl (Susan)... and I took advantage of an opportunity that would turn out to lead me to my first career.

Berry College, located just a few miles from my house, had a Summer Enrichment Program that allowed invited high school sophomores to take college courses during the summer between their sophomore and junior years. Somehow, for reasons I never understood, I got one of those invitations.

And I almost turned it down.

It wasn't like I really had anything else on my schedule for the summer of 1969. But like pretty much every teenager, I was looking forward to sleeping late and goofing off for most of June, July, and August. My parents told me that they thought I should consider it, though, since it was an honor to get the invitation. My parents were never pushy or manipulative in any way. That's probably why I took their advice--their reasoning was sound (I could get high school credit for the course I took, and it might make a good impression on someone at Berry) and it was only a couple of classes.

So I accepted the invitation and signed up for the program. And I began what became a college tradition for me: I looked at the schedule of classes I could take and searched out the two earliest classes.

Like I said, I looked forward to sleeping late and goofing off--but I put a higher priority on "goofing off" than on "sleeping late," and I realized that if I could take an 8am and 9am class, I could finish up by 10am, get home by 10:20, and still have the entire day to do what I wanted. Heck, if I hadn't taken the class, I probably wouldn't have gotten up much earlier than 10am anyway, so I really wasn't losing any time at all!

Turned out that I enjoyed the classes, and I liked Berry College. It also turned out that they liked me, I guess, because at the end of my junior year they offered me a chance to take another class in the summer of 1970--and even better, they offered me an academic scholarship contingent on me maintaining my GPA and doing well in my summer 1970 class.

None of that had been in my mind when I took advantage  of the Summer Enrichment Program in the summer of 1969. Had I not participated in that program, however, I probably would have never gotten that scholarship offer, which means that I probably would have never gone to Berry College, which means that I wouldn't have been able to marry Susan a week after my high school graduation because it wouldn't have been financially feasible, which means that I wouldn't have crossed paths with the college professors who guided and inspired me to sign up for the teaching program at Berry, which means that I wouldn't have become an English teacher, which means that  Susan wouldn't have been able to go to Coosa Valley Tech as soon as I began teaching, which means that she wouldn't have gotten the software design certification that got her the job with Management Science America in Atlanta, which means we wouldn't have moved to Marietta, which means that I never would have gone to Dr. No's when Artie Decker owned the shop, which means hat he would have never offered me a job ordering comics for his store, which means that he would have never sold me the store in 1982...

It's amazing how much my life was changed by two little decisions: first, that fateful call to one Susan Hendrix of Cedartown, Georgia, in response to her letter of comment in an issue of Batman; second, my taking advantage of an invitation to take college courses at Berry in the summer of 1969. Put those two things together, and the doors to all the good things in my life were opened for me.

(This also began a lifelong habit of scheduling things in the morning, by the way. Medical appointments, financial appointments, pest control visits, home repairs--whatever it is, I try to schedule it as early as possible. I still value my goofing off time, and I love the feeling of getting those obligations and duties out of the way as soon as possible.)