How did Cameron Crowe enroll at highschool at 22 years old. How did he hide his real age and stuff. Don’t they need to see your birth certificate or Social security number to enroll at school. See here to see what I’m talking about Cameron Crowe - Wikipedia
If I remember correctly from when I read the book, the principal pulled some strings and got him in. He (the principal) was apprehensive at first, but relented when he found out that Crowe had met Kris Kristofferson.
Edited to add: Yep. Here’s the story, from the book’s introduction.
The only other case I know of where an author enrolled in a high school after they had graduated to write a book about it is when Lyn Tornabene did the research for her book I Passed as a Teenager by enrolling at 33 or 34. I think she didn’t inform anyone at the high school but just put fake information in her application forms. There have been a number of cases of people enrolling as adults in high school for various sick reasons by faking things.
In days gone by it was easier to squeak by with fake or insufficient documentation. Nowadays we have heavyhanded enforcement of all sorts of laws that require positive documentation of all this and that. Years ago, you probably could get enrolled in school by finding someone old enough to be your parent and have them sign a “certification” that you were their child and that you were all residents.
There’s a short story called “Child of All Ages” which is about
An Ancient Greek girl whose father developed an immortality treatment, but it only works on little kids and has to be taken continually so her dad died and she has lived as a little girl for thousands of years and has been spending the past few decades getting herself placed in various orphanages and foster care systems in the US or another similar country. She comments that it’s becoming harder to forge the right paperwork.
I’m only in my early 30s, and I don’t think I got my social security card until around the time I got my first job. Also, I could probably pass for a teenager today. In the old days everything wasn’t such a “Show Us Your Papers” ordeal.
Even discounting that, there have been recent cases of grown men playing high school basketball. One of the top current high school players is 20 or 21, I think. A few years back a guy older than that was in high school. So I would say it’s not even impossible today and much easier then.
I find it hard to believe a principal would just “look the other way” like that as it would be highly illegal.
must be great to be rich and famous. You get a lot of free stuff and people help you out.
Would it? I assume it is under some circumstances legal for adults to enroll in high school, as police officers sometimes do so as part of an undercover operation. I remember hearing a piece on This American Life about a high school senior who had the bad luck to develop a crush on a classmate who was actually an undercover policewoman trying to identify drug dealers within the school. He tried to impress her by scoring some pot for her and wound up in prison.
He was hardly “rich and famous” at the time.
If you don’t need a birth certificate to become POTUS nowadays, why would you have needed one to go to high school 30 years ago?
I am a few years older than Crowe but my high school had a cafeteria where students could smoke. Don’t think too many have that nowadays.
There is an interesting piece about the book and movie at *The Onion A.V Club’*s Book vs Film. Wish they did the column more often.
Geez, my mom may have shagged him a time or two. They lived in the same apartment building in the really early seventies and used to go bike riding together. When he released The Silver-Tongued Devil and I, mom played it on continuous vomit rotation. She was definitely infatuated with the guy. Wonder what the principal would have made of that.
It’s an incredibly good column, but as you can see from looking at even a few entries, it takes a long time to research and write. Still, I too wish BvF had a more regular schedule.
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Jim’s Son, this is your third warning in two months for political jabs in General Questions. Your posting privileges will be under review.
Colibri
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I went back to high school* when I was 21, married, and had a 3-year old child. It may be pathetic, but it wasn’t for any sick reason. I had dropped out at the start of my senior year because I had gotten pregnant and I didn’t want to be a “pregnant high school dropout” statistic. I didn’t have to fake anything. Everyone knew how old I was.
- I had a blast, and it was a great year. I was there because I wanted to be there, and for the first time in my life I was a) on the Honor Roll, b) accepted by the kids (the bullies who made my life hell were long gone), c) liked by the teachers, and d) actually enjoyed school, something I never could have imagined happening.
Ooops, sorry. I missed the Edit window to delete my post when I realized I was in GQ and wasn’t still in IMHO
My apologies, Equipoise, I wasn’t saying that there aren’t many cases of people going back to high school after dropping out who want, a few years later, to finish at a school where everyone knew how old they were. I was talking purely about cases like Cameron Crowe in the OP or Lyn Tornabene in my post who went back to high school while the other students and most of the teachers and staff of the school thought that they were just students of the regular age. There have also been cases where messed-up people a few years after graduating high school have faked documentation so that they can attend a high school far from the one they graduated from. They had various sick reasons for doing this (and they weren’t authors working on a book). Of course I wasn’t talking about cases like yours, which must vastly outweigh the numbers of these sick people. I thought it was obvious from my post that I wasn’t talking about people who hadn’t finished high school who went back a few years later, just as you did.
We’re cool, I understand.
Was this a long time ago? I thought the law said you can;t enroll in highschool if your over 18?
Mid-70’s, a small town in Kansas (the entire high school, 9th-12th grades, had 400ish students). No one ever mentioned a law about it that I remember.