24 Days and Year Seventeen

I turned sixteen.

I had a great birthday/farewell party with friends from school and church. I was very happy.

And then we moved.

The new house wasn't too bad, and I did have a finished basement to spend time in, but I was starting over again.

Dulaney Senior High School was a little different, and things were weird. Maryland required 3 years of PE, so I had yet another semester of the damned class. The saving grace of the class was that it was only three days a week, so I had study hall for two of those days. The other classes I took were College Algebra, English, Physics, American History, Symphonic Band, and for one semester Art, and the other SAT preparation.

Marching band was different. They didn't do football games, but instead did lots of parades.

I quickly got my driving permit, and for a year dealt with the midnight curfew. I knew exactly how fast I had to drive given a certain distance from home, or more accurately knew exactly how from from home I could be to drive the speeds I tended to drive, to be home when the clock on the wall was at about the sixth chime of twelve.

Again I made some good contacts with girls, had some possibilities, and then when they graduated, I had some other possibilities.

And then I found out we were moving again. We would be moving back to California. I would go to the high school I would have gone to had we never left California. It gave me hope, but I was still upset to be heading off to my third high school.