Since when we were in Fourth grade, we all knew that we
would be sent away after Ninth grade to high school - somewhere. By Sixth grade
it was an accepted fact of life. By Eighth grade it was in our faces. Some kids
welcomed it and others were uncertain about their fate, but we generally agreed
that the kids whose parents couldn’t bear to separate with their kids and
resigned were doomed as they could never experience the joys of being a
returning student.
Now anyone in their right mind would do everything
possible to avoid being in Arabia in the
summer, but we weren’t even close to being rational at that age. Like almost
every Aramco kid, I’d rather have ten root canals in a row than miss out on
being a returning student. Many kids went to Rome or Beirut or Switzerland, but
I was brainwashed into going to the Benito Mussolini School for destroying
social graces in the dying town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin –a Jesuit boy's school
on the edge of Hell. I must admit that there was a certain fascination to going
to a school in America .
I knew more about Rome and Beirut
than I did the USA
and thought that it might be interesting to sample the real American lifestyle
– mistake number one.
So 1962 I showed up on the banks of the Mississippi with a windbreaker and desert
boots. No one told me that it’d be ten below with three feet of fresh snow in a
few months. Somehow I acquired a parka, sat on radiators all winter long and
was finally released. For some odd reason I flew back by myself though my
brother and a couple of friends went to the same correctional facility. I flew
into the Rome
airport and was wandering around waiting for the next flight when I bumped into
the famous Jimmy R. who I had known since before Kindergarten. He was the kid
who got caught by his foot upside down in the ficus tree by the swimming pool.
