*Note to readers: I don't have children in school, but I do have tremendous concerns with education in America. I believe the entire system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up, but also believe that will never happen for a variety of reasons. I can't even touch on all of the problems or why I see them as concerns let alone offer proposed solutions as this is a forum for love, romance, and sex, not social issues.
Very briefly, I feel a 'trades track' would be one of the most important as would school choice. There are many good schools in this country, but I contend they are good in spite of, and not because of, the overall system which is abysmal, imho. Those two things however, are just the tip of the iceberg.
Regardless of the overall state of education, I find the propensity to drug children alarming. Yes, many of them are behavioral challenges without drugs like Ritalin and Adderall, but if we changed the system entirely, there would be very little (if any) need to dope children. Again, imho.
Lastly, my comments are not an indictment on the vast majority of teachers who are very dedicated, hard-working people struggling to educate our children in spite of the system that often makes it a very difficult task.
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"Please tell me this is temporary. It is, right? You can't possibly be thinking of staying there."
"I assume so, but until we go home and find out, I won't know for sure," he told her.
"Home? That's not my home. In fact, it's not even yours anymore. This is your home because it's our home. We live in Palo Alto. That means our home is here—in California. What we're doing is going back to Seattle so you can collect your inheritance. The very next day we're on a plane back to civilization." She paused then said sharply, "Right?"
Wyatt Hall, Senior, had just passed away. He was a very wealthy and influential man known by everyone who was anyone in the Seattle-Tacoma area and most of western Washington state. He was shrewd, cunning, and ruthless in business, and as a father, he was harsh, distant, and cold. Wyatt, Junior, therefore, couldn't wait to leave for college and started during the summer term just to get away after graduating from high school a little over six years ago.
Although his father footed the bill for his college education at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, he was for all practical purposes, free and clear of the insane asylum he'd previously called home. In addition to tuition, room and board, Wyatt received a generous monthly allowance which he freely spent in an effort to establish his own life and an identity separate from that of his father.
Wyatt was an excellent student who thoroughly enjoyed learning and whose academic performance was superb. He also happened to be a very good-looking young man who loved to party and play. With those combined attributes, he could essentially sleep with as many different attractive women and girls as he desired, and he desired a lot of them the entire four years he was an undergraduate.
That continued during his first year in graduate school, but sometime during his second year, he reached burnout when it came to hooking up. The faces were now nothing but an endless blur and he found himself desperately wanting this thing people referred to as 'a relationship'. He'd never had one of his own nor had he ever seen one successfully modeled for him. Therefore, he had no idea what it would look like. He only knew he was sick and tired of playing musical chairs with women in his bed. He certainly couldn't look to his parents as role models to see what a real relationship was like, so he wandered off into uncharted territory in search of something he craved but had never before seen or experienced.
His father was indeed cold and distant, but his mother was no help, either, as she'd suffered from bi-polar disorder all his life and his father had had her institutionalized his junior year of high school. He went to see her every time he went 'home' for a visit, but she barely recognized him. She wasn't catatonic, but she was so out of it from the massive amounts of medications they fed her twice a day that she did little more than sit in bed or perhaps a chair staring blankly into space as he tried to tell her what he'd been doing since the last time she saw him.
He barely knew his little sister, Sadie, who was now eleven. By the time she was in Kindergarten, Sadie had been 'diagnosed' with something called ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder. As a result, Sadie was being given Ritalin and Adderall twice each day, making her little more than a functional zombie.
She wasn't as detached as his mother by any means. She was even able to attend school—private school—with the aid of a full-time nanny. Wyatt had no real relationship with sister, and because of the drugs, it was essentially fruitless to even try. Sadie was buried somewhere deep inside the walking-dead body, and Wyatt had never really seen her.
Three days ago he'd received a phone call from his father's personal attorney, Randolf Crane, a nice enough man Wyatt had met several times before. "As the executor of your father's will I'm legally required to inform you that all financial support is being terminated immediately," he'd informed Wyatt, Jr.
That first bit of news hit Wyatt like a bolt of lightning. He'd finally found someone and was in what he considered to be a committed relationship. Even though it often seemed to have more downs that ups, he found this preferable to his former way of life. His new girlfriend appeared to be content to stay with him, and from Wyatt's perspective, that was what a relationship was all about—staying together.
Brooke Levinson was a 22-year old former model he met via a friend from the local area who'd gone to Stanford with him while living at home in Palo Alto. He told Wyatt he had a younger sister he wanted to introduce him to in the hopes she might settle down herself after Wyatt mentioned his desire to move beyond the endless one-night stands.
Much like Wyatt, she'd 'gone off the reservation' after leaving home, only in her case she didn't have college (or anything else) to anchor her. She was young, gorgeous, and making money. Not big money but more than she'd ever had and she spent every dollar she made partying hardy with people she thought were her friends and sleeping around with any good-looking guy who caught her fancy.
Not surprisingly, she'd gotten pregnant at 21 and even though she'd had an abortion, rumors quickly spread that she was out of control. As a result she was no longer getting calls from her agent. Gone were the local commercials and photo shoots that had been her bread and butter and along with them, the money she so desperately craved.
Broke and back home, she found herself reluctantly looking for visible means of support. When she learned from her brother that Wyatt had money—and a lot of it—Brooke happily agreed to meet him and agree to a first date, during which she'd casually mentioned to him she didn't care one way or the other about money.
It hadn't hurt that he was as handsome as anyone she'd ever dated, so as long as he had a steady source of income and treated her reasonably well, Brooke Levinson was more than willing to not only be exclusive but move in with him when Wyatt asked her to do so two months later.
She also couldn't complain about the mind-blowing sex which she loved and wanted as much as him. All in all, Wyatt Hall was a literal and figurative goldmine and she fully intended to ride this gravy train for all it was worth.
"Wyatt? Did you hear me?" Brooke asked.
"Yeah, sure. Listen babe, I don't really know. All I know is I have to go home for some kind of formal reading of the will."
"And then we'll get our money, right?"
Our money? Wyatt looked at her and for the first time began to see her for what she was. In spite of her physical beauty, he didn't much care for what he was seeing.
"Again, I can't say for sure, but yeah, that sounds about right."
"How much do you think we'll be getting?" she asked ever-so sweetly as she came over and sat on his lap.
Wyatt really had no idea how much his father was worth. In fact, he didn't even have an educated guess. He'd always assumed it was in the tens of millions, but the honest truth was he couldn't answer her question.
"I don't know that, either," he admitted.
"But it's at least several million, right?" she asked as she ran her hand around his face.
