So, whatever happened to Lida Allen from Heights High, that snotty smart girl with hair down to her ass? Various people who knew me from the sixties wanted to know at one point. Here is a brief précis:

After failing, despite my SATs, to get into Radcliffe, I went to U of M in Ann Arbor. As near as I can recall, I quickly decided that formal education as actualized in that place had no charms for me, and was preventing me from learning the particular things I wanted to know (at that time, this consisted of developing a set of values, deciding if knowledge was possible, learning to play the piano better, and learning the cultural history of the world without being evaluated, myself). Besides, I had reached the limit of my ability to deal with authority. Yet, lacking the gumption to just quit, I merely failed to show up for sophomore year, instead registering at Cleveland State. Finally it was brought to my attention by a psychotherapist that I had no actual desire to go to school, so I quit. This was about the beginning of 1968.

There followed a brief stint attempting to sell the Cleveland Press over the phone, to earn enough money to pay my music teacher, Hazel Hart, from whom I was taking piano, harmony, and ear training. I sucked at selling, so I got a job as a page at the local library, and also acquired a tiny class of beginning piano students.

In 1969 I married fellow HHS-er Jeff Karp, from the year ahead. We anticipated his being drafted imminently, so I went back to Cleveland State and took a couple of computer programming classes so as to have a better shot at Canadian immmigration. As it turned out, Jeff had hepatitis and medicalled out, and I was launched on a set of job skills that, while enabling me to make a living, also provided a too-big-for-me-to-overcome inertia of experience in a field in which I was not interested.

In 1972, Jeff's father died, and Jeff worked for a short stint at his dad's oil drum reconditioning plant. This didn't set too well with him. I had quit work and become pregnant. Our daughter was born in the summer of 1973. In late 1974, abandoning my piano students, we moved to Toronto, where a friend of a friend hired Jeff as a bookkeeper. He hadn't finished school either, so he went nights to York U and got a degree in Accounting. Our son was born in 1977. Jeff became a Chartered Accountant in 1979. I went to art school for a year (it was 2nd or 3d year, I don't recall which). Meanwhile I was sinking into depression and having other problems tat doubtless contributed to our inability to get along. He left, and I went back to my parents with the kids in 1980. Since all I could do was computer programming, that's what I worked at. I saved up and bought a double house in Cleveland Heights, installing my sister and her family in half of it. The divorce was finalized in summer 1980. Jeff went on to become vice-president for international taxation at a major Canadian bank.

I simultaneously worked part time for the City as the administrator of a summer music series "Mostly Modern Amphimusic", which later failed. I had developed a big crush on the entrepreneur of the series, whom I'd used to date for a while after high school, but this didn't work out at all and when it finally hit me that I had neither Jeff nor any other significant male I went into a major depression. The only reason I didn't die was that I couldn't bear not to know what would happen next.

The City gave me an unexpected bonus, which I used to visit friends in Italy. When I came back I had a job offer to run the computer end of some research projects in the Psychology Department at Cleveland State. So I did this, setting up systems of programs and student workers to analyze a bunch of data for various grants for various professors. While doing this, the PI who had hired me saw that I could probably finish my degree prettty quickly if I availed myself of various credit-by-exam options and course overloads (since starting the summer music project, I had been enrolled in singing lessons and choral groups at CSU, but had thought this was on a non-degree basis; I hadn't realized that CSU had automatically reactivated my degree-seeking records when I re-enrolled, and had been counting all this towards a degree). So I took classes for five quarters and got a BA in 1983.

While taking these courses, I met Mike Baumer, a philosophy professor, who became my sweetie-pie and then my second husband.

Meanwhile in 1984 the grants dried up and I started grad school so I could get an RA. I also worked for a summer at the Navy Finance Center. That fall I took a job with CSU's "Academic Consulting" area of the computer center. I worked for CSU in various computorial capacities, including a bunch of website mastering/drudgework, until the end of 2008, when I retired. I got the MA (Psych) in 1989.

Meanwhile my kids have grown up. My daughter has her PhD in genetics from Columbia ("with distinction"), and is now a post-doc at UMass, doing worm research. She's married to a really nice Torontonian and has two wonderful kids. My son has his PhD in math from UBC (British Columbia) and is married to a really nice woman he met at Tulane; he's now an assistant math prof at Harvey Mudd. Someone once asked me what I'm proud of; I'm not really proud of anything, but I'm nost relieved that I did not mess up the kids.

I have not really stayed in touch with anyone from our class. I don't believe I've done anything of note. I haven't even succeeded in staying out of trouble, because the city is always after me about my lawn. My main friends are three people who live in Toronto, New York, and Maryland, and with whom I communicate maybe twice a year. I'm falling apart, tired, not fit (though not fat), and wishing futilely to win the lottery. Since retiring I've been sleeping.