One of the basic differences between people can be traced back to their high school years. There are those who look back and view that period as through a golden haze. Then there are those who, upon receiving their high school diplomas, feel the way a convict must feel when his parole comes through. I was one of those who felt he'd been serving a sentence for the crime of having turned 14.

Sometimes I feel sad for the early bloomers, for those who, because they were cute or were good dancers or had their own cars, were treated like royalty, and for whom life has been all downhill ever since. Like child actors, they were has-beens before they were out of their teens.

At the time, I must confess I would have given anything to be one of those people who couldn't wait to get to school in the morning because it was so much fun. I, on the other hand, was a clock watcher. It wasn't just that I couldn't wait for 3 o'clock to roll around, I couldn't wait for the three years to roll around.

When I think back to those days at Fairfax High half a century ago, what I remember best was being bored out of my skull. Even those classes that dealt with subjects in which I was interested -- English and history -- could put me into a 60-minute coma.

The fact is, I was a pretty good student. I'd hate to think what life must have been like for those kids who, for example, couldn't get a handle on math.

Frankly, I'm not sure how I could have made things any more interesting if I'd been put in charge. It's easy to say that better teachers could have pepped things up, but I'm not so sure, looking back 50 years, that they were as dull and pompous as I thought they were at the time.

I think at least part of the problem was having to take all those classes that were required in order to graduate. I understand that one of the purposes of high school is to give students a taste of various disciplines in order to tap some unsuspected talent or passion. Otherwise, people might suddenly wake up in bed at the age of 92 and say, "Dang it! I should have been a nuclear physicist instead of a barfly."

In my case, I knew I wanted to become a writer. But, partly because I was on college track and partly because they were regarded as girls' classes, I didn't take typing or shorthand, two courses that would have proved invaluable to me. Instead, I was wasting my time taking advanced algebra.

Now I would like to think that, although I've never had any practical use for algebra or geometry, they helped me learn to think logically. But I'm not convinced. If they had, surely I would have been taking typing and shorthand my senior year!

Speaking of my senior year, Mrs. Finney gave us a two-part final in algebra. Right after finishing the second part, I came down with the flu and wound up missing the final week of classes. Knowing I had failed the course and would have to take it over in summer school did nothing to hasten my recovery.

When I finally showed up to collect my report card, I discovered that I had not only received an A in algebra, but I had gotten the highest scores on both parts of the final -- a 95 and a 97.

To this day, I remember seeing the test numbers and wondering if I was still home in bed, hallucinating. On the one hand, I was relieved that I wouldn't have to spend my summer in a classroom, watching another clock. On the other hand, I was discombobulated. It made no sense.

To this day, I can not fathom how I managed to do so well when I'd felt so unsure of the material. It's one thing to believe you've done well and to discover you were mistaken, but quite another to think you've failed only to find you've left the brainiacs in your dust.

On second thought, perhaps those years weren't a total waste. For one thing, from constantly watching the clock, I discovered, like Einstein, that time is relative. In a classroom, time not only moves at the speed of molasses, sometimes I could swear it actually moves backwards.

But there was one other important lesson that Fairfax taught me. Whereas for some kids, the value of a high school education was in discovering how little they knew, in my case I not only found out what I didn't know, I even found out, thanks to those bizarre test results, that I didn't even know what I knew.

You can learn more about Burt and his latest book, Conservatives Are from Mars (Liberals Are from San Francisco) at his home page. Write Mr. Prelutsky at: