IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN

It's a reoccurring dream. I'm walking the halls of Center Grove High School. I'm young, but I know all the crap I know as an old guy. Trying to find my way around, trying to learn what I didn't care to learn then, trying to catch up.
I always wake up feeling a little disappointed in the choices I made back then.  I guess it's because I know how much I left undone there.
I could never get enthused about learning anything except how to score. Too bad they didn't hand out degree's for that.
The only thing I liked in school besides girls and partying, was reading. The two books that really peaked my interest was Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm.
Although I do regret not applying myself in school, the truth is, it probably wouldn't have made a lot of difference if I had. I just could concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. If it would have been invented then, they probably would have diagnosed me with A.D.D.
Luckily for me dad was a mechanic and he had me and my brother out in the garage all the time working on cars. That gave me the opportunity to work with my hands and learn the art of repair and enabled me to make a modest living.
Don't get me wrong, I like what I do, but there are times when
I, like the Scarecrow yearn to have a brain, a really big one!
There are so many other vocations that would have been more rewarding than fixing peoples broken shit.
I, like most kids dreamed of having my ass strapped to an Atlas V rocket and go from 1 G to 9 Gs to 0's Gs in a matter of minutes.
That would have meant I most likely would have been a pilot also. That too is high on my "what I wanna be when I grow up" list.
Astrophysics is another cool job. That would have probably would have required me to take more than general math in school and you have to work a lot of nights too.

A fiction writer, now those guys have got it made. You can do that anywhere, all you need is a notebook computer or just a smart phone. You could churn out a literary masterpiece while sitting on the toilet. I don't have the brain for fiction though and I would probably end up a miserable bitter old drunk and take a shotgun to my head like Hemingway.

Ehhhh I guess I ended doing what I was meant to do, I could still end up a miserable, bitter old drunk, but I will leave the shotgun to the head Hemingway routine to the frustrated writers.

I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about my lack of education. If you took 98% of all college professors, all the socialists and progressives, all the leftist politicians like Obama, Biden, Dodd, Frank, Reed, Pelosi and put them all together in one place. Then I walk in and suddenly I'm the smartest guy in the room.