High Price

survived being locked up, he saw himself as one bad dude. Rather than returning to his advanced math classes, he skipped more and more school and started hanging out with the professional thugs. Soon he dropped out entirely.
    By then he was pulling armed robberies, jacking trucks carrying radios, TVs, and other electronics and appliances. He and his friends once hit a Brinks truck and successfully hid the money so well that it has yet to be found. But the rumors about that heist marked the peak of his glory. In his mid- to late teens, he began drinking heavily and smoking weed, and by his early twenties, he’d started smoking crack. He ultimately spent at least ten years in prison—and now lives in a halfway house, barely able to function on the psychiatric medication he was prescribed when he entered prison. Although the details are unclear, it is said that the medications were originally prescribed to control his anger.
    Fortunately, there are also positive life events that can lead to spiraling virtuous circles, not escalating vicious ones. For me, one of these was my decision to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). Although I’d worked relentlessly at athletics and had big dreams about college basketball and the NBA, I’d otherwise given little thought to what I’d do after high school. Since I’d told all my friends that I’d be getting a big college scholarship, I knew I had to leave home somehow—or risk losing the rep I’d so assiduously worked to build up.
    I knew nothing about how college basketball really worked and the importance of coaches in getting scholarships for their players. I was ignorant of the machinations and realities of that world. All I did recognize was that without a full scholarship, I probably couldn’t afford to go to college. I needed other options. I wasn’t likely to get much financial support from my mother. In fact, I figured she’d probably pressure me to stay home and work rather than encouraging further education. In our family—as in many others in my neighborhood—children were expected to support, or at least partially support, their parents once they reached working age.
    My father wasn’t going to be of much use, either. He’d never demonstrated that he had that kind of money to spend on his children. Although I sometimes saw him around, by this time we had drifted apart as fathers and sons often do during adolescence. The thought of having to depend on my mom for college funds or the notion of skipping college—and the chance of a basketball career it offered—and going to work full-time was not appealing to me.
    Maybe these considerations were in the back of my mind; maybe they had nothing to do with my decision to take the armed forces test. All I remember is that early in my senior year of high school, I decided to take the ASVAB because it meant that I didn’t have to go to my classes that day. I know for sure that I had no active desire to join the military. The guys I’d seen coming back after they’d joined the army or the Marines seemed brainwashed, no longer concerned with what we cared about and valued. But my guidance counselor, Ms. Robinson, had said I could leave school early if I took the test—and I knew I could bubble in the answers quickly and be on my way to hang out with my friends much faster than I could be if I went to class. That nearly random choice had a considerable influence on my life.
    In the school cafeteria, faced with a number-two pencil and a question booklet, my primary goal was to get done quickly. I didn’t fill in the little ovals at random, however. That seemed dumb, even though I told myself that I didn’t care about my score. I did guess without much thought or leave questions blank if something didn’t come to me easily, particularly on the reading and vocabulary sections.
    When I got to the math section, however, I found myself paying real attention. I had my pride. I thought to myself, you might trip me up with English or social studies but not math. I did my best on the math sections of the exam. Then I turned it in and forgot about it in my daily routine of basketball, spending nights with my girlfriends, and rocking the mic on the weekends. I didn’t give it another thought.
    A few months later, the results came back. To my complete astonishment, I was told that I was one of the only people in my high school to score high enough to be recruited by the air force. At the time, it