Moving into High School

8th grade would be my last year with the gang from Morris Plains. Borough School only went from 4th - 8th, and then students normally matriculated to Morristown High. This my father refused. I knew he had visions of me attending Harvard one day, and although Morristown High actually had a pretty good track record of placing kids in the Ivy League, Dad did not believe it. He saw Morristown High as nothing more then a means to mediocrity. It was at this time I also started to see how he felt his own existence was inconsequential largely due to his choice of attending a state university and settling for a job at AT&T.

Throughout the early part of 8th grade I applied to three private highschools - Pingry, Delbarton and Morristown Beard. I never got into Delbarton - something I could not understand but Dad blamed on us not being Catholic. I was admitted to Pingry which is a very prestigious school in New Jersey, but the distance to the school was 45 minutes and the kids seemed somewhat "nerdy" to me. Funny how that works. In High School it is a travesty to be a nerd, but take those kids out ten years and they end up with all the jocks working for them. Whenever I get the chance I like to tell any child willing to here it to go for nerdom. It pays a lot better than an athlete.

Morristown-Beard quickly caught my eye, mostly because the class I attended on my visitation day had two girls in it like I had never seen before. You see I had never been exposed to real money in my life. I am not talking about well-to do people, but outright rich, and this school had its fair share. Morristown-Beard was known for its high net worth students if not for its academic prowess. The school had decayed quite a bit since its hay day in the 1940s as a Harvard prep school. It was hit hard in the 1970s with drug usage and gained the nickname of "Snow Beard." Most students that now made it through "Beard" ended up at a university that cost every bit as much as Harvard but had a tenth of the substance.

Nevertheless, I had never seen girls that were so finely dressed, had perfect complexions, were entrancing to a young, immature, rube like myself. My decision was made. I quickly matriculated to Morristown-Beard assuring myself that the lack of academic reputation would do me no harm. I would end up with a college football scholarship anyway despite my 5'8" stature and fairly modest speed.

During the time I was deciding on high school, my Dad and I seemed relatively close. Camp Norway had restored my confidence after it had been devasted in 7th grade when I had been unceremoniously excommunicated from my "clique" for reasons I cannot remember. Possibly because I was leaving my friends anyway, I did not care if somehow they found out that Dad was gay. Still, I told nobody. It would be years before I would entrust my first friend - a girlfriend in fact - with this knowledge. Dad's life would remain private for some more time.