Parents Influence

My father is a lawyer, an economist and a hippie. My mother is a special-ed teacher, a naturalist and a hippie. Although I was born in Orange County, CA, I grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Seattle. We moved to Seattle in 1980 just as Boeing was in the midst of a major layoffs. Microsoft and Starbucks weren't even born yet. There was even a billboard that said, "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights". So we managed to move into the area at just the right time. Eventually the fortune of our good timing would modify thier hippie personalities but at that time they were such hippies! Let me prove it. Their VW bus broke down on our journey north from southern California and my lullabys were Puff the Magic Dragon and Sounds of Silence.

So what do you get when you cross a lawyer, an economist and a hippie? I learned three important lessons from my father: "buy low, sell high", don't trust everyone else to solve the problems and don't argue with a guy who argues for a living. They also drove me into the Marines. How else do you rebel against hippie parents, other than join the Marines?

I had the upbringing that was supposed to lead toward careers in climate science, folk musicology or medical research in the developing world. There was nothing stopping me from going to college at the end of high school. Good grades, no arrests, no drugs, no children. I never shot a gun. I wasn't even allowed to watch GI Joe as a child because it was too violent!

What happened in high school that made it all go so awry?