Truancy or leave

Time: 2005
Where: New Vista High School, Boulder CO

It was towards the end of my freshmen year in high school, I sat down with the school principal and was given two options: get officially expelled and taken to court on truancy charges OR simply don’t come back next year. Well, that was obviously my last year attending New Vista High. This wasn’t my first time in the principals’ office. Throughout the year I had gotten my locker searched multiple times, drugs confiscated, paraphernalia taken and suspended on a few different occasions. I had been sat down multiple times for skipping school but at this last one, I had no more chances left.

Every morning leading up to this day I would get high or drunk on my way to the bus stop. On the bus to school, I would question whether I was going to go to school that day. Normally, I would watch all my classmates get off at our stop, and I would stay on. Continuing on to the Pearl St stop to hang with the bums, druggies and dropouts. I would meet up with Sammy* and Benjamin*, the only two kids I knew that were bigger fuck ups than I was. Surrounding myself with these two made this lifestyle feel more normal. We would spend our days coming up with ways to make money by getting our hands on anything we could. Anything to either sell for cash or trade to a dealer. Anything we had to do to get high, we would do it, and we always came up with something.

I will have multiple posts on stories I had with these two. We went to great lengths to get high, many things I’m not so proud of. Last I heard of Sammy he did 3 years in a juvenile detention center for stealing a car high on meth, and was out now selling prescription pills as his primary income. I haven’t heard anything on Benjamin, which in that world usually means one of two things: he’s either dead or in prison. Their stories could have easily been mine so it just makes me realize how extremely grateful I am for the life I have now, and gives me a million reasons to never go back!

*names changed to keep privacy