To get back to my story, though, these perfumes and tape tour fiascos were just small bumps on the road. No more than getting tackled in a football game and failing to make a first down. As far as I was concerned, life was a game and I was still headed for the Super Bowl. Youth is that way. Resilient.
The mail-order business continued to churn out profit. The brochure route kept growing and soon we found ourselves in other exciting endeavors as well. Sure, it’s impossible to succeed in business if you don’t concentrate on one thing. Sure, if you spread yourself too thin you’ll risk losing everything. But we were too young to know these rules and our youthful exuberance (and extraordinary good luck) seemed to overcome everything.
Things were going well and just seemed to be getting better. I was president of the student body, had a great girlfriend, had a successful and expanding set of businesses, and was even doing pretty well in school (especially since many of my teachers worked for me). Life seemed like a smorgasbord where I could just have more and more of whatever I wanted. There was just one ominous storm cloud on the horizon: college.
To say I was schizophrenic about the topic of college was an understatement. All of my upbringing pointed toward it, yet many of my inclinations pointed against it.
On the one hand, I was a Jewish son, a descendant of the People of the Book. You know, the parents who left Egypt so their kids could get into good colleges and medical schools (or law schools if they were dumb). I had always done what was expected of me. I read high school books by third grade, was always in advanced classes, attended the city’s top gifted high school, had won first prize in the National Science and Inventors’ Competitions (I developed a rudimentary artificial spinal cord and subsequently sold development rights for it to a medical research facility). I was a nationally ranked debater, had high SAT scores and a decent scholastic average. Not only that, but all of my friends’ top goal at that time was to get into a good college. On top of this, I enjoyed learning things. My mother (one of the truly great people in the world, but a Jewish mother nonetheless), whose parents left Europe for economic reasons, never went to college. She strongly shared the values of my schoolmates (and their parents) regarding university education, and wanted only the best for me. And what Jewish boy wants to disappoint his mother?
On the other hand, right now I was free. I was already doing better economically than most college graduates. I was an independent thinker, and I couldn’t stand the rigid structure and rules of school. By senior year school was already feeling like a time-wasting prison. I was unimpressed by the intellectual ability of most teachers (and Bronx Science attracted the best in the city) and doubted college professors would know much more. I also had strong conservative leanings and was turned off by the drugs, draft card burnings, and left-wing ideology that in the early 1970s seemed to characterize academia. My father, who without any formal education had worked his way up from repairing broken radios to running a commercial insurance brokerage, was also against college. This also affected me, though, as everyone knows, Jewish boys have to live up to their mother’s, not their father’s, aspirations. My dad, probably sensing this, mostly kept quiet on the subject.
Most importantly, I didn’t want to give up Debbie—who was still a high school junior—by leaving town, no matter how prestigious the school. I didn’t know what to do.
Obligatorily, I applied to Harvard, although I hoped to go to Columbia. It might be less prestigious, but it was Ivy League and it was in New York. If I went there, I could have everything. My relationship with Debbie could continue just as before, and by taking a jock schedule, I could skip most classes and keep building my business, while still getting a degree and paying lip service to a well-rounded education.
Unfortunately, the day I visited Columbia to accept the offer of admission was the day Cambodia fell to the communist Khmer Rouge. All over the campus this event was being celebrated with bonfires, dancing, and hot dog roasts. This was just too much for me.
Even at that time, it was abundantly clear to me that the Khmer Rouge were very bad guys. Yet the students at Columbia clearly thought that, by comparison to any regime linked to America, the Khmer Rouge were great heroes. Worth calling off classes and having a weenie roast for. That was enough for me. If Jane Fonda wanted, she could go to Columbia. For me, I was forgetting about elite colleges and going to the local community college. I might not get a great education, but I’d still be in business and I’d still have Saturday nights with Debbie to look forward to.
The next day Harvard accepted me. Harvard. The best. Crimson. Ivy. Tradition. So much for all those teachers who thought I wasn’t brilliant. Not only that, but they were offering all new freshmen the chance to take a year off before attending, to become worldly, to travel, to sow their wild oats. This solved everything. It would make my mother happy; it would make me more attractive to Debbie’s parents, who always felt I was from the wrong side of the tracks and not quite good enough for their daughter; it would let me stay with Debbie. Best of all, it would let me work full-time. Now I was really going to have fun!
What would happen when the year ended? you ask. Good question! But you know youth: Live for today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. And I really believed it. After all, up to that time everything had always fallen into place.
Maybe by the end of the year I’d be so rich and famous everyone would agree I didn’t need my degree. Maybe Harvard would give me an honorary degree, or count my business activities as independent studies, or give me another year off. Like a person facing long prison time who just keeps appealing to stay out on bond till his pardon or new evidence shows up or the judge forgets about him, I didn’t worry about tomorrow. I just wanted to keep enjoying today.
