True Stories from Roger Golden

I remember my junior year of high school. Each year, the military would come around, and hand out pencils and hand out those computer forms where you fill in the letter of your choice. Let me interject myself briefly to say that I think war is insamity in progress, and I don't want any part of it
This particular year, I noticed at the bottom of the "All About You" cover sheet, that they wanted my permission to use the results of the test. I had to back up and read it again, I was (quite) briefly thunderstruck. So I held up my hand, and motioned that poor private over to my desk. NOW I know that the guy was just doing his job, but THEN I thought I was making a statement.

"There's a place here for my signature."
"Yessir, just sign your name."
"But what if I don't want the military to know what I am capable of?"
"Um, but everybody just signs right there. It's a formality, really."
"But I have to sign this paper before I can take the test?"

"Yes. It's really juss-"

And at this point, my homeroom teacher (these kinds of tests always got held in homeroom, but nothing else did) had noticed the private attempting to understand why I wasn't just signing the damned paper like everyone else does. So over comes Coach Greene (not my coach, but I guess he was someone's, JV Basketball or something) and proceeds to tell me to stop wasting time, and sign the paper so the test can get started.

"But I have to give them permission to use the results of this test!"
"Yes, Mister.(Strongly emphasized) Golden. Now sign the paper."
"I have a problem with that. I don't want them to know what I can do."
"Roger, you don't have a choice. Sign the paper."
"Of course I have a choice! If I didn't have a choice, they wouldn't need my signature!"
"Sign the paper, or get out of my damned classroom!"

So I handed the private his pencil, and gathered up my books. Since everybody was going to be taking a test I didn't want to take to begin with, leaving the "damned classroom" seemed logical. Have you ever seen a person who was livid? That was Coach Greene, at about that moment in time. Seeing that his bluff was called, and I was on my way out, he grabbed me by the arm, and escorted me to the door. In the hallway, he attempted to comprehend why anyone wouldn't just sign the paper like everyone else, and then escorted me uo to see the dean of students.
-
Mister Johnson, the Dean of Students, and I were not on the friendliest of terms. He had so far attempted to catch at something for 3 years, and had come up with a big fat zip. Deep down, he knew I was up to something super devious, and I didn't have the heart to tell him I was just messing with his head. But I digress.

My father was called at his job. At about this point, I was starting to think that maybe I should have signed the paper like everyone else. I was on less friendly terms with my dad than with the Dean. What had at first looked like a Can You Say Hallelujah! fair break was starting to look awfully gloomy.
The situation was explained, as I listened to the Dean's side of the conversation. And then he calmly explained that the signature was really nothing more than a formality, and he really didn't know why they even had that on the paper at all. And then he glared at me. And then he attempted to explain that really, it WAS JUST A FORMALITY, and this was the first time he had heard of anyone not signing. And then he said goodbye, and hung up the phone.

In one of the extremely rare cases when my father ever sided with me on an issue, he had agreed, that if my permission were required, and I chose not to give my permission, then it seemed to be my right not to do so. Aside from briefly going over the situation that night, my father and I never spent any time on the issue.

And, I spent a few hours reading a good book, while every other junior in the school had to take a 3 hour test..
I have no idea whether the signature continued to be required, or not.

As you will see in the next little adventure, this was not the end of the subject.