briefly

On August 1, 2012 he will be twenty-one. That age is the see-you-later drop-deadline for high school graduation: normal plus three extra years. I count the time on my fingers: 2009-10 is one, 2010-11, 2011-12. Plus this, one more-or-less semester. He won't make it, though it could be close. If this, if that, if the other.

I have had this talk before, initiated it myself. I have repeated in all sincerity, "High school is not the place for you. I think it's better if you go." I have talked of adult education, the free classes over at the college. I have walked a complication to the door and wished it all the best before I turned and sighed, relieved.

It's different this time, or not.

If his records had been read correctly, if, frankly, they had asked me, he would never have been enrolled. The sixth-grade credit the counselor granted him temporarily, accidentally, toward high school is what put him over the top, what pushed him over the line into, "okay, go ahead, take a shot."

And so for ninety minutes every day, we have been, just the two of us, by some miracle. Instead of the new kid getting, "One minute," and "I'm sorry," in the midst of some different, hectic class, he has gotten a private tutor. It'll be a short-lived luxury, and I'll miss it, when he's gone.