I went to St. Thomas Aquinas (STA) for grades 1 through 8. I was very short, however, and pretty shy too. As a result, I didn’t socialize very much (although I did play Little League baseball from the age of 8). That probably was a good thing, though, as I didn’t get in a lot of trouble. I spent more time studying and always got very good grades.

    There was a high school, Brooklyn Technical High, which was a very well-respected school for math and science. I had a pretty good aptitude for those subjects, and I was told more than once that my going to Brooklyn Tech was a “foregone conclusion.” I took some aptitude tests in my last year, even though my 8th grade teacher said it probably was a waste of time because everybody knew where I was going.

    Well, I guess I did pretty well on some of those tests, because I was offered a scholarship to Brooklyn Preparatory, which was a highly-respected Catholic Jesuit high school. I was also going to be in their Advanced Honors Class. It was a fairly prestigious honor, and my parents and I decided that it would be foolish to turn it down. So I came to my next fork in the road by going down a path I hadn’t anticipated. This turned out to be one of those “double-edged swords,” as I missed out on things like shop, woodworking, etc. and other mechanical skill kinds of classes.

    As a result, I am not what you would consider “handy”. On the other hand (I didn’t see the double entendre here until I was reviewing this. I guess I can’t help myself), I received an EXCELLENT education in the humanities. It made me a lot more literate than I might have been had I gone to Brooklyn Tech. I took four years of Latin, two years of French and became very well-read. This came in handy later on in life when I took another fork, which I will get to eventually.