The Valedictorian

My father was valedictorian of his High School Class in Seattle, Washington. However, he never told me this even though we were very close as I grew up. I found out this fact 23 years after my father passed away in 1985 when I was 37. He told my cousin, I believe, because my cousin was valedictorian of his NYU Law school class and he went on to becoming one of the best lawyers in the United States in his specialty.

At first I felt sort of hurt that he told my cousin this and not me. But then I realized that at age 10 I contracted childhood epilepsy. And even though I was an A student up until I was 12 I wasn't able to continue this through junior high because of epilepsy. I realize now that he didn't tell me about this because he didn't want to either make me feel bad or because he knew I might try to compete and knew the stress might kill me. If someone had epilepsy then stress could kill because the excess electricity in the brain might cause a stroke or worse. He forbade me to ever take any medication for it then because there was only phenobarbital at the time and he knew this to be a really awful drug with bad side affects. So I was left with nothing but mind over matter to survive this disease of too much electricity in my brain alone with nothing but mind over matter. Though I was always as intelligent as my father and my cousin I could not maintain the mental stress necessary to be as successful in college as my cousin. I found myself turning my intelligence toward becoming a seeker after ultimate truth in all things in all ways. The western world especially doesn't give kudos for people like this as a general rule. So in most ways I have found this to be a relatively thankless task I had set for myself.

However, since I had faced death so many times in my life, first with whooping cough as a 2 year old that I almost died from. And then heatstroke at age 10 with a headache for several days. And then childhood epilepsy for 5 years I found myself to be much kinder and much more serious than most children or young adults. Even my best friend in Junior High and High School had had polio until he was 5 and was very serious like me. He had the record for the rope climb in Junior high that wasn't ever broken for 25 years.(He didn't use his legs at all just his arms so no one could beat what he did).

My first major in College was Computer Dad Processing or (computer business accounting). I studied computer operations and computer programming and learned COBOL and FORTRAN. In the late 1970s I also taught myself BASIC so I could program my 1978 4k TRS-80, my first computer in 1978. Back then you had to program whatever computer you bought to make it do anything. 9 years later I bought a 286 AT clone. My oldest kids all used both computers and learned to play games on both starting in 1980.

My son, born 1974, became a computer whiz by age 15 and by accident crashed a 386 at his friends house. So he stayed up all night reconfiguring it so it would work again. Everyone realized at this point he was a computer prodigy because even computer professionals realized they could not have done what he somehow did. When he did an IQ test he was found to have an IQ of 150.

Recently, a computer tech looked at one of the computers my son built for me from scratch. He said that it would be impossible to buy what he built anywhere on earth and that the graphics level was about 10 times what the best computers mass produced had on board and the same for the sound. He said I should keep it a few more years because I couldn't replace it commercially anywhere.

Though my son still loves building and tinkering with computers he said to me a few years ago. "Dad I'm tired of fixing and building computers. I want to fix people instead. (Many friends and relatives had died and he wanted to do something to heal the vacuum they left in all of us). So he and his wife are going to be RNs soon. Though he is intelligent enough to become a doctor he is in his middle thirties now and it might be problematic to do that now. However, we shall see. His aunt is a neurosurgeon.