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Now we come to it. It was the first day of Geometry on the first day of high school my sophomore year. My school was at the time one of the largest schools in the state with over 2600 students. My middle school and junior high years weren't the highlights of my life. I mostly tried to stay out of sight, devouring novels like Jurassic Park in a matter of days.

But now I was in high school. I'd seen movies about high school and looked forward to living out the familiar narrative--rejoicing in the locker room after home field victories, falling in love for the first time, taking the SAT's and such. It all seemed so big.

I had taken a seat in the rows of desks and looked to the front of the room where my teacher, an obese old man sat breathing through his mouth. As I would soon learn, it was his last year as a teacher and he would soon retire. He was one of, if not, the worst teachers I have ever had in my entire life and probably a big reason that I never took another math class after my junior year of high school.

He called roll and put all of our names into his computer and the computer spit out a random seating chart. He printed it out and tacked it to the wall. We found our names on the chart and took our seats. I was bummed. I got a seat in the front row to the far left, right next to the teachers desk. There weren't any hot girls next to me and all the cool guys that looked fun were on the other side of the room. But sitting behind me was a tall goofy looking kid whose name turned out to be Aaron. Aaron and I soon became fast friends.

So there I was in high school and I wanted a car and fashionable clothes, things my parents couldn't exactly afford. They told me to get a job and so at 15 I got my first job at a hole in the wall teriyaki shop. My boss was an imposing Japanese man who yelled at me constantly and never once gave me a break the whole time I worked there. After 3 months of grueling work over the oven, I quit. My new friend Aaron had pulled some strings and got me a job at the Royal Fork Buffet. It was the start of great things. The question I find myself asking to this day, and will touch upon later, is how would my life be different if that computer had randomly assigned me to sit next to a different kid that September morning. Let's see how that computer program has affected my life.