Stories for Dad: Basement Escape!

Earlier this week I took my daughter, Arianna, to UW-Oshkosh for a campus visit. It was nice and while she’s waiting for UW-Madison to get their shit together (get her off the waitlist and offer her admission), UWO will be fine. They have nice school colors, a good mascot and lots of gear available at the University Bookstore.  : )

High School

Thinking about Arianna now and my high school career back in the day there aren’t many similarities.

Dane

I was an unengaged kid who couldn’t seem to find anything I liked. I could always do the work, I just didn’t want to. I wanted to bowl. I wanted to take shop classes. I wanted to do throw myself into anything other than school. This lead to some minor attendance problems. <wink wink>

Arianna

Arianna on the other hand is a diligent student with exceptional grades. She studies hard and really works for her grades. Plenty of it comes naturally, but she also puts in the time. Her hard work is paying off as she’ll be receiving an Honor Cord from the National Honor Society in the very near future to wear when she graduates.

College

For me, college wasn’t even a blip on the radar. Just not my thing. I was off to the Army National Guard within a year after graduating. Arianna has been planning where she’ll go to school (UW-Madison are you listening?) since she was in 3rd grade.

Where’s the Beef?

I know what you’re saying to yourself… why am I reading this story? I remember my high school career and let’s just say it could not have been fun for my parents.

Anyway, getting back to the funny part… I should mention my drive and determination. About the lengths that I would go to to get what I wanted.

I was grounded all the time? I was grounded a lot for skipping school. I swear I spent half my high school career grounded.

The funny part of the story is how on Friday nights, I’d go downstairs to my bedroom and say I was going to listen to music. I’d head down, remove the window, crawl out and run to the bowling alley. The even funnier part was it was winter and there was snow on the ground. I also didn’t have shoes as my Dad took them away so I couldn’t sneak out. Are you kidding me? I couldn’t let that stop me. I ran barefoot, carrying my socks, and then when I got to Casino Lanes I’d put on rental shoes and walk around. Yes, you can laugh now.

I must have looked like a real dandy walking around with red, green and tan rental shoes. Yikes.

Eventually, my Dad caught on to what I was doing. He was downstairs one night adding wood to the furnace (we had a wood burner in our house) and felt cold air coming from my room. Normally I put the window back so that nothing looked “off” from outside the house and so the cold air didn’t get in. Heck, I even put a towel at the door threshold so cold air wouldn’t get out. Apparently the window wasn’t in correctly and the rest is history. My Dad opened the door and noticed that the window was out and I was gone.

Things Today

Funny to laugh about it now, but back in the day we had a pretty rugged go of things. I certainly didn’t make life easy for my parents. Hopefully they understand that I was just doing my job as a teenage kid.