Anne and Martin Court self reliance scholarship.

Purpose of Scholarships
The Anne and Martin Court self reliance foundation promotes self reliance and independent thinking among the young men of America.

Scholarship Criteria
Our belief is that achieving a high grade point average should not be the only criteria for determining who deserves to be helped. For that reason we are offering a scholarship that will be awarded on the basis of character, as evaluated by the essays that are submitted.

Scholarships are intended for our future leaders across a wide spectrum of fields of study. This award is available to high school seniors and all students attending a post secondary educational facility.

You are not required to be taking any particular courses to be eligible.

How to Apply:

Students must submit an essay entitled “The day I came of age.”

Amount of award: $500.00
Deadline for entry: March 31, 1986

Submit essay to: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

There is no application packet for this award. Please do not include your resume at this time.
Be sure to include your full name as well as the name of the school you are attending this year and your plans for next year.

***

The Day I Came of Age. Anthony Burris, Lee High School. I plan on attending university this fall, I have not yet decided which.


… when I became a man, I set aside childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11)


The day I came of age started well, the sun streaming in past the blinds woke me about ten. I waved my arm in the air, and a synthesized voice said “You have, no, messages.” No one on Polestar (a BBS) was wishing me happy birthday; oh well, I’m not sure I’d mentioned it so I couldn’t complain about the lack of birthday messages. Maybe when I got UUCP working.

Then the radio turned on: “another hot day in the Valley today, look for highs in the mid eighties.” Gotta love the Valley in early January. Gotta love projects that work, so I jumped out of bed and the radio went silent. Damn, I must have jigged something on the breadboard bumping about like that. I looked at the rat’s nest on the breadboard, decided not to debug it there and then so I just flipped the radio on manually.

I pulled on my robe and wandered out to the dining room, it was Sunday, Mom and Dad were out at church as usual. I’d opted out of church a few years before, after my crisis of faith. I’d now say I was agnostic, I was not a communicant. Mom and Dad had left a card for me, inside was a gift card to Tower (Records), score.

After showering I went out to the garage, ignoring Mom’s powder blue Topaz, I took my bike. On such a beautiful day, bike sounded better. As I was riding the 10 minutes to Jasmine’s house, I was thinking I what was going to happen. Her Mom and Dad should be out at church, so we’d have the house to ourselves. She’d normally be with them but was staying home especially for me and my birthday. She was sweet like that.

I was expecting more than sweet though, we’d talked long and hard about this, about sex. I’d just about persuaded her, and then she turned eighteen. From then it was out of the question. I can’t say I blame her, it’d be her on the hook for statutory rape. Still we’d discussed much. From my agnostic point of view it was an academic question. The morality she kept was mainly down to Paul and his letters to the Corinthians.

I’d read up on Paul, “know thy enemy” as a wise man said. There was plenty to argue about there, starting with what authority he really had down to the consistency of the application of his words. There are those who view Paul as a corrupter who hijacked Jesus’ words and substituted his own, I quite liked that one, you could go back to basics with “Love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no greater commandment than this.” She just blushed when I asked how she loved herself, implying I was the neighbor.

So she’d agreed that today was the day. She was inconsistent keeping to Paul’s creed already, no one could keep to everything he said and stay sane, so what’s one more article to worry about. I pedaled harder, I had something to pedal for. I got to her house, jumped off of the bike and rang the front door bell.

Jasmine opened the door, “Hey Tony.”

“Hey.”

“Happy birthday.” I stepped across the threshold and she kissed me on the cheek.

“Thanks, I scored a Tower card.” I flashed the gift card.

“Cool.”

“We should get to Tower, it’s on the way to Bob’s.” We’d be going to Bob’s Big Boy for lunch as usual, after the important business. (Bob’s is a burger chain in the Valley.)

I stepped up and held her, “But first, I’m eighteen now.”

“Yeah, congratulations.”

“I’m like, legal now.”

“Oh, yeah.” She was silent for a minute. “But … I can’t sin against my body.” Same old lame fucking argument.

“I thought we’d settled this!”, that was more a shout than conversation. “I’ve been waiting for months, like since your birthday, you’ve just been stringing me along!”

I let her go and glared at her; she just stood there, not meeting my gaze, “I’m so sorry Tony.”

I couldn’t take this. I shouted, “Fuck Paul! Fuck the Corinthians!” I felt like ripping up a fucking bible at that point. I ran out, slammed the door behind me and jumped on my bike. I pedaled for all I was worth. I was just going to go home, but the way home went past Bob’s. I’d just about calmed down, so I stopped. If Jasmine wasn’t going to help, I could at least enjoy lunch.

***

I was just chowing down on my burger when someone said, “Tony?” I looked up. It was this older lady, she looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. The outfit should probably have been a clue, it looked like she was dressed for tennis, a racket in a cover was hanging off her shoulder.

“Yes?” I said uncertainly.

“Don’t you recognize me? I suppose it’s been a few years. Mrs. Williams from Outlook.”

Now I remembered, she was one of the gym teachers from my junior high. I’d played tennis against her in eighth grade a few times and boy did that get me hot. I jerked off to fantasies about her for months. The kids at Outlook had given her the nickname “Mrs. Cold”, she had a fearsome reputation. She was usually paired with Miss Notty, aka “Miss Hottie”, who all the boys had the hots for. Mrs. Williams became Mrs. Cold next to Miss Hottie. I wasn’t picky, I’d take either.

“Oh, hi Mrs. Williams, good to see you.” Not just being polite, I like looking at her legs in the short skirts she’d wear for tennis. Her legs might have been her best parts, but all over was good. At my age, just being female went a long way to making anyone hot to me. Being so old didn’t even put me off. I guessed she must be like, 35 by now.

“So, you’re on break from college?”

“Naw, I haven’t decided on a college yet. Like, I’m still a senior at Lee High.”

I guess the stress I was feeling about college as well as Jasmine showed through, even if I was trying to play it cool. She asked, “Do you want to talk about it? May I sit with you?”

“Sure, help yourself.” I didn’t think there was anything I could talk about I hadn’t already talked to the counselor about, but hey, she was still hot.

She sat down. “Wow, not even in college yet.”

“I’m not even …” I started to say I’m not even 18 yet, but then corrected myself. “I’m, like 18 today, I’ve applied, I’m like waiting for the decisions.”

“18 today? Why are you eating alone?”

“Me and my buds are going for a Zoo at Farrell’s later,” Farrell’s is a local ice cream parlor; the Zoo was totally awesome, they made a big fuss if you ordered it. “I was supposed to be here, like with my girlfriend. You should know her, Jasmine, daughter of Mr. Humphries, the Physics teacher, she’s in my AP calc class. But, like we had a fight.” I should probably have stopped there, but something made me carry on. Mrs. Williams was nodding, she knew Jasmine. “She won’t put out, she’s a Christian, like I couldn’t even get a blowjob for my 18th.”

There was silence, I regretted my big mouth, “Sorry Mrs. Williams, like I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You probably shouldn’t, but please call me ‘Diane’, I’m not your teacher anymore and you’re an adult now.”

“Ok, sorry Diane.”

My careless words forgotten, or at least put aside, she asked: “So what are you doing about college?”

“I may have to go to like, Berkeley.” She was surprised at my down tone saying that.

“That’s a good school. Most eighteen year olds can only dream of going to Berkeley.”

“But I always wanted to go to Caltech or Stanford. You know like Stanford has its own particle accelerator. That’s like totally cool, they were one of the first nodes on ARPANET, it’s just by Silicon Valley with all those cool companies. Caltech has JPL they run Voyager, that’s like beyond cool, that’s rad.” That just burst out of me in one breath. I have no idea how much of that she understood, but my enthusiasm impressed her. She smiled, God she was sexy when she smiled, she was sexy at any time.

“Why can’t you go to Caltech or Stanford? They’re good schools as well.”

“Caltech’s too close, that’s like half an hour from here. If I’m going away to college I want to be like, gone. I’d probably have to live at home if I went there, that’d be like totally lame. Stanford’s just too expensive, it’s like ten times as much as Berkeley. I don’t think Mom and Dad could afford it, they’ve said we can worry about it like, if I get accepted, but I know they can’t.” The words just spilled out of me, it was good to get the thoughts out that had been swirling in my head. “Not on like teachers salaries.” That she understood. I don’t know if she knew both Mom and Dad were teachers; they did quite well as teachers go, but it’s never going to make anyone rich, not Stanford rich.

“There’s scholarships aren’t there? Stanford must have scholarships.”

“Stanford has like some crap about “needs based financing”, but I don’t know and their admissions are crap anyway.” She looked taken aback by that opinion, so I expanded, “Anyone with a brain can get into Berkeley, at Stanford they worry about like stupid things like fucking ’extracurricular’, what’s that got to do with anything. it’s like, work. I mean I got all these offers from places like I’d never heard of when I took the PSAT, but Stanford’s not one of them. I mean like I aced the Math PSAT without breaking a sweat, but getting to Stanford … you have too … you can’t be lazy. I’m just too lazy. I’ve never like had to work at school, I just succeeded.” Again, just one breath, this crap was stressing me out big time, but it felt good to say that out loud.

“You always tried hard in PE, I noticed that. I liked that.”

“That’s different, I never was any good, I wasn’t a jock, but if I tried hard I could like, maybe get somewhere. In the rest of school I was like going to get an A, no matter how hard I tried, so I didn’t try, like what’s the point? About the only thing I do extracurricular is build computers in my bedroom. Like, I tried tennis, I wasn’t any good, I don’t do that much any more. And there’s surfing of course.” Well, everyone surfed so that wasn’t remarkable.

She giggled, that was puzzling. “Maybe you should have tried harder at tennis.”

“I tried as hard as I could.”

“But you never beat me.”

I didn’t remember the outcome of our games, just playing them and lusting after her. “I didn’t? I don’t remember.”

“I remember, you came close a couple of times, but never did. I was quite disappointed, I have a special reward for boys who beat me.”

What was she talking about? “What?”

“They got blowjobs, maybe more.”

I didn’t have an answer to that. We were quiet for a while. I decided one confession deserved another. “You never told me that, I’d have tried like even harder, you know how many times I beat off thinking about you in those rad little skirts.”

“No I don’t, but I can imagine, and that’s very flattering. I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t advertise that sort of thing, but I always hoped you’d get the reward.” I had no answer to that either. She gave up waiting for a response, “You still could.”

“What?”

“Get the reward. It looks like you’re dressed for tennis.” I was wearing the usual sort of thing, t-shirt, shorts and sneakers, it’d work for tennis.

“OK.”

“The courts at Outlook should be free. I have a spare racket with me. I’ll drive.” There wouldn’t be many people there at that time of day.

“It’s only, like, five blocks. I could ride my bike and meet you there.”

I kinda lost my appetite after that, I just wanted to get to the tennis courts.

***

So after lunch, we met at the court.