The Upside down Parabola

Up until I was 13 years old, my life proceeded in large, bountiful steps. I talked early, walked early, read early. At the age of 8 I was enjoying literature books assigned in 9th grade. At age 6 adults people oohed and aahed at my ability to sketch what I see on paper. At age 10 I held conversations with adults. At age 5 I was that child reciting poetry on stage, and I did that every year until I was 10 or 11. I was the child on stage giving the welcome message to the audience. I was the adored one. I was the admired one.

Then when I hit 13 something happened. My life slowed down dramatically. For a long time I didn't notice. But when I hit 18, the age when everyone in the Western world heads off to college, I began reflecting on my life. My life had come to, as they say it here, a screeching halt. My parents couldn't remotely afford college in their dreams, so I had to work. A sense of hopelessly descended as I had to submit to the 9-to-5 daily grind in a starchy accounting firm where I was the ultimate anomaly. There I was bored to the edges of insanity. Riddled with petty, cruel but amiable people, it was my first encounter with the corporate world. I was largely friendless and ignored. I ate lunch alone. But in the summer/winter breaks when the college students (who were all children of the partners of the firm) come in to intern, I had some reprieve. The daughters were either haughty or super-cool, and two of the sons plus the delectable, law grad intern had crushes on me. Of course I was impenetrable, because I was 18 and full of angst. I'm not supposed to be working at some stinking accounting firm; I'm supposed to be studying biology. Angst congealed when they returned to college after the breaks leaving me the youngest among aged wolves and foxes. Those were very odd and strained days indeed. Because of those days, A wintry Bethesda has a crisp, distinct smell to me. It represents the Ivory Tower in whose basement I worked. Still I learned. I learned that anything that required a 9-to-5 office setting was not for me. Anything that discourages creative flexibility and insists on a strict adherence to precedents and the status quo is not for me

That was a while ago. A trough in my opinion. From there small steps. Montgomery College to UMBC to Johns Hopkins to Mayo.

Thank God for upside down quadratic functions. Thank God for that light at the end of the tunnel.