I am turning 59 years old in a few weeks. I got a haircut yesterday. The hair on my head looks brown, but all of the hair falling on the barber cloth was white. It took me 3 hours to remember Marilyn Monroe’s name today. I usually exercise with kettlebells at 8 AM in the morning, but today felt achy enough that I took my dog for a long walk instead. The walk worked out my kinks and I trained with kettlebells later in the day, but my age is asserting itself. And yet it seems like just the other day I was a boy…

I talked my mother into enrolling me in summer school in 1971 because I was so eager to begin high school.

There was one teacher supervising a dozen students in a handful of different subjects. There were no other students like me. I was younger than everyone else, but the big difference was that I wanted to be in school.

The teacher gave me a 9th grade geography textbook and instructed me to write a summary of each chapter. I got an A. I was less enthusiastic about school by the end of the summer.

I am pretty sure that every student who showed up to class in summer school passed. I don’t remember any of us taking tests. We just had to show up and follow instructions.

I don’t know if that is why I gave extra credit assignments so freely when I was teaching at Auburn University as a graduate student. I taught Family Structure and Function and some of my students struggled because I gave a quiz every Friday and mid-term and final exams. But I gave extra credit to students who wrote about their own family using whatever concepts we were discussing in class that week. Even bad students could pass my class if they were willing to work. I don’t think I ever failed anyone, but I remember one guy who was grateful that I gave him an extra credit assignment after grading his final exam. He needed the extra credit to pass.

The big thing I remember about summer school was how the teacher would play chess with this one guy who must have been a junior trying to become a senior. The student won matches occasionally and they talked about strategy a lot. I don’t remember ever playing chess in summer school. It is possible that I never said anything to anybody.

I knew how to play chess. My older brother taught me. Mike liked to play chess with me until I made the mistake of reading a book from the library and learned a lot about chess that he didn’t know. I started beating him and he quit playing with me.

I don’t know if I was really good at chess as a child because I pretty much abandoned the game after my brother wouldn’t play with me anymore.

Maybe I never liked competitive situations or maybe beating my brother taught me that winning is not always a victory.

If I had known that I would still be thinking about what lessons I learned in summer school in 1971, I would have kept a journal. But maybe the important thing is not remembering all the details. Maybe what is important is realizing that one thing leads to another.