To better understand this story, let's begin in 1959, the start of my nine year career at St. John's School. 

To be quite frank, I had no business being at this school.  My admittance was what most people would call a fluke.  Due to its lofty reputation, SJS has long been exceptionally difficult to get into.  The school is also very expensive.  Given there was no possible way my father could afford this place on his middle-class income, what was I doing here? 

Ironically, I owed my elite education to my father's mistress. 

Should I thank her?  No, probably not.  The Mistress came very close to ruining my life.  As we shall see, her vindictiveness will play a direct role in my Senior year Crisis.

My life had been good until the Mistress came along.  I was 8 when her presence began unraveling my parents' marriage.  Did I know about the mistress?  No.  Did my mother know about the Mistress?  No evidence, but she was suspicious.  Something was definitely wrong.  The arguing started when my father asked for a divorce without divulging the real reason (take a guess).  When my mother said no, my father decided to make her acutely miserable.  For the past year, my mother and father had fought like cats and dogs virtually every night of the week. 

My father's tactic was to criticize my mother in every way possible.  He called her a lousy mother and a lazy housekeeper.  Not a day passed when he did not criticize her, pointing out her life of comfort while he worked himself to exhaustion.  Hopefully his ceaseless harping would force her to give in.

My father's nasty tactics made me crazy.  Listening to my parents argue each night, I turned into a sullen, deeply insecure kid.  As an only child with no family friends or nearby relatives, I had no one to turn to.  Forced to live alone in this house of horrors, I became a disturbed, angry kid.  I disrupted class so often that finally my parents were called in to hear the riot act. 

Upset over my poor grades and severe discipline problems, my parents sent me to their psychiatrist.  After testing me, the doctor had a surprising solution.  What I needed was a stiff challenge.  Send me to St. John's and let the competition work its trick.  SJS is where his two boys went and they thrived. 

Mom was for it, but Dad was against it.  Given my father's low opinion of my intelligence, he was stunned when I managed to pass the SJS entrance exam and receive an invitation to attend.  The thing to understand is that admittance to this school was highly coveted.  Even back in those days the waiting list was out the door.  But that meant nothing to my father.  Dad said forget it, there was no way on earth he could afford the tuition.  Let the boy stick to public school where he belongs.

Mom was fed up.  They had been arguing for a year and getting nowhere.  Sick and tired of the impasse, Mom stunned my father with an ultimatum.  "Pay Richard's tuition for three years and you can have your divorce." 

Dad immediately balked.  He would have to go deep into debt to pay for this.  Which was true.  The St. John's tuition was way beyond his pay grade.  Mom countered with blackmail. 

Given my mother's emotional problems, she did not have much energy left over for me.  With many nights devoted to cruising the bars for strays, I was left alone to take care of myself starting at age 10.  Abandoned by one parent, neglected by the other, I had no one to offer common sense advice on how cope with my underdog status at the rich kids school.  I was consumed with envy at the privileged lives of my classmates.  It would have been nice to have a parent to remind me to look on the bright side.  Unlike a lot of kids in this world, I never went hungry and I always had a roof over my head.  Plus I was getting a great education.  Rather than appreciate what I did have, I grew bitter from daily reminders of how much better my classmates had it than me. 

It was obvious from my ragged appearance that I came from a different walk of life.  Although we all wore the same uniform at St. John's, one look at my beat-up shoes was usually enough.  My chipped tooth removed any remaining doubt.  Since my mother was too broke to have the tooth fixed for two years, it sent a clear message that money was scarce in my home.  By definition, every child at my school (but me) was well cared for.  Best clothes, impeccable social skills, contact lens, braces, the latest haircut, dermatologist, etc.  So look at me.  Chipped tooth, hair that sticks up straight, cheap clothes, thick glasses, plus eyes that don't match due to my blind left eye. 

My Senior year Crisis was not the product of one particular event, but rather a complicated series of problems that snowballed.  The first problem occurred in September 1967.  Mr. Salls was the new Headmaster, taking the place of Mr. Chidsey.  We knew each other well.  Mr. Salls had been my German instructor for three years prior to his promotion.  Although we never spoke on a personal basis, I could tell he appreciated how hard I worked in his class. 

Mr. Salls made it a point to meet with each senior early in the school year to discuss college preferences.  I had my heart set on Georgetown University in Washington, DC.  My beloved Aunt Lynn and Uncle Dick lived across the Potomac River in nearby McLean, Virginia.  I wanted to be close to them.  I had been working as a grocery sacker after school for the past two years.  By the end of my Senior year, I estimated I would have $2,000 at my disposal.  That was a lot of money back in those days.  That plus six years of savings in my father's College Pledge should be enough to pay for Georgetown. 

For some mysterious reason, during our meeting Mr. Salls completely ignored Georgetown despite my explanation why this school was my one and only choice.  He insisted I also apply to Johns Hopkins, a college I had never heard of.  The moment I discovered it was a men's-only school, there was no way I was interested.  Due to my sense of inferiority, I had yet to work up the courage to ask one of my lovely classmates for a date.  A serious case of teenage acne put a swift end to any chance of changing my mind.  Given that I never had a single date in high school, the thought of going to a men's school was out of the question.  Sensing my reluctance, Mr. Salls took the extraordinary step of asking me to apply to Hopkins anyway as a favor to him. 

I agreed to do so, but why did he bully me?  I was very angry when I left his office.  Mr. Salls had made me promise to apply to a college I had no interest in.  The thought of wasting $75... two weeks of work at the grocery store... on a senseless application fee made me sick to my stomach.  It was standard procedure for my classmates to apply to ten schools, maybe more if they felt like it, but that was Daddy's Money.  This $75 was coming out of my own thin pocket.  I was so bitter that I unwittingly made a serious mistake.  I had intended to apply to the University of Texas as a backup option.  But why waste money?  With my grades, I was a shoo-in for Georgetown.  So I decided to forget UT.  Using the money to apply to Johns Hopkins instead of UT, the day would come when I would deeply regret this decision.  I had just made my first mistake.

I did not make my second mistake till the coming Spring.  However the seeds for that mistake began in November.  This is the story of 'Little Mexico'.

Late in my Junior year, my mother finally found steady employment in Houston's famed Medical Center.  She decided to buy a ramshackle house in a largely Hispanic part of town.  Mom wanted to make her live-in Mexican boyfriend Ramon more comfortable.  Given her shabby credit history, I have no idea how she persuaded a bank to loan her the money.

Although my father had little to do with me, he did deserve credit for his reliability on child support.  Not once did he miss his $100 per month payment.  My mother and I were extremely dependent on this money.  The check's appearance would allow us to get the lights turned back on or take a much-needed visit to the grocery store.  Then came the bad news.  In November 1967, for the first time since the divorce eight years ago, Dad's monthly check failed to appear.  This was serious.  Without my father's child support check, my mother would not be able to pay her house note. 

It took her two days to realize my father had not sent a November check because he was no longer legally obligated to pay child support after my 18th birthday.  Oops.  My mother was completely blind-sided.  When she bought the house, my mother had assumed the child support would continue until I finished high school seven months down the road.  My mother was panic-stricken.  How would she ever make up the difference?

I stared at her in utter astonishment.  Well aware she had purchased this house with no margin for error, my mother should have had the sense to anticipate her child support problem.  Too late now.  I offered to make up the difference with my grocery store money, but my mother said no.  Without telling me, she had already cooked up a wild scheme.  My mother's solution was to invite Ramon's younger sisters, Janie, 18, and Linda, 21, to come up from Mexico.  They were expected to get jobs as waitresses in one of the nearby cantinas and pay rent. 

I had no idea what was going on.  I came home one night after work at the grocery store to find the two sisters had moved into bedrooms next to mine.  Within two weeks, Janie and Linda had boyfriends.  My mother gave their boyfriends permission to come live with us as well, a decision that included Enrique's 2-year old son Manolo.  I was never consulted about the additions, probably because my mother knew I would scream bloody murder.

The ensuing culture shock flipped my world upside down.  I had grown up as an only child accustomed to silence.  Suddenly there seven other people in this house besides me.  This included my mother and six Mexican immigrants, none of whom who spoke much English.  Given their fondness for loud Mariachi music, the place was a madhouse at night.  Given how hard the racket made it to study, College could not come soon enough.