Who Should Decide

29^th October 2014

Dear Cassi,

         

I’ve been working on my webcomic “Jonny American” after some years of posting nothing, and I’ve started him over. Now Jonny is a fourteen year old starting high school.

         

This wakened an odd memory how a decision that changed my life back in nineteen ninety four. I recall that we got a letter from the school district mentioning that I had the option of going to a different school. My parental guardian asked if I wanted to make the switch and as a fourteen year old I said no.

         

He never gave me the options of considered the reasons why one school may have been better than the other. This was the choice between Whittier High School and Pioneer. The first was a larger school with better funding and older buildings. It was a crumbling wreck but had better programs. The other was the school by the freeway that my siblings had gone to and so was the one I attended.

         

I’m not sure if my life would have been that different had I gone to Whittier High. What I am sure of is that a fourteen year old isn’t all that equipped to make that call. I wasn’t the brightest of all children, that for sure, but few at that age could have come to the right decision.

         

Its one of those things, Cassi, in a minute long conversation my life changed with no fanfare or pomp. That was the world I lived in back then. It was a world where no one gave me much consideration.  At fourteen years of age I had already become that extra bit that could have just been cut off.

         

I know my life would have been different had I gone to a different school, but I see no point in speculation. We cannot turn back time, we cannot change the past, all we can do is look forward and hope.

Know who’s important, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal