End of the semester, Mr. Squish style.

In my first semester at CSU Sacramento, image I had a classmate named Brad who did nothing but work on the school paper. Nothing. Yes, Brad had other classes; he was in the same Newswriting and Reporting class as I. But he barely went, never paid attention, and was forever asking me what he missed. He didn’t care about ethics, news judgment, learning to gather and confirm sources, copy-editing, headline-writing, or any of the nuts and bolts of reporting. He just wanted to see his byline in the paper. Which was seldom, as I recall.

By midterms he’d either flunked his exams or not taken them. He was flunking everything but the Hornet, and for all I knew he was flunking that too. (He wasn’t on my staff.) I don’t remember him on assignment all that often; I just know he spent way too much time at the Hornet trailer… and if I was holding something he was curious about, he’d grab it right out of my hands. That’s mainly what I remember of him: Grabby. He had all the self-control of a two-year-old. At the end-of-semester staff awards, I even gave him a Dementia Award for Grabbiest Staff Member. I don’t think he appreciated it, but it was his last semester at CSUS anyway.

I don’t know whether Brad was a freshman, but I’ve known a lot of freshmen like that. They can’t hack higher education. They don’t have the self-discipline. Unless you’re in the AP program, it takes very little self-discipline to get through high school: The teachers and administration will do whatever it takes to keep you plugging away till you turn 18, and will give you tons of second chances to actually acquire a diploma. University (unless it’s a private school which really covets your money) can take or leave you.

My first year was at Solano Community College, where I discovered the joys of having my full load of classes done by 1 p.m. each day, and the rest of the day free to indulge in extracurricular activities. And there are lots of extracurricular activities. Me, I stuck with the school newspapers and radio stations. Other students discovered causes, fraternities, student government, clubs, alcohol and weed, or nooky. And in grad school, add to that the lure of surfing the internet all day instead of getting any papers written.

I dated one such student. I really should’ve seen it coming. She wasn’t a freshman, but she was so done with school by that time. She’d come hang out in my room while I was doing homework, and while I got all my work done, she’d goof off. Then we’d spend the rest of the day together, and she’d never get her work done. I was her excuse for not doing any. Our relationship ended shortly after she was expelled.

Anywho, back to 1991. “What’re you gonna do about your midterms?” I asked Brad one day.

“Oh, I’m gonna drop all the classes I’m flunking,” he said.

“How many classes will that leave you?”

“This one.”

I thought it a massive waste of tuition. At the time CSUS wasn’t expensive. They charged fees instead of tuition (under the ruse that they don’t charge tuition), and fees were roughly $750 a semester in the early ’90s. Not counting books, dorms, and food. But you could actually go to school without taking out any student loans, and so I did. I had an arrangement with the parents: Mom and Dad would individually put up a third, and me the other third—and I’d pay for books and transportation. But spend all that money, then drop all the classes? Massive waste. I actually never dropped a CSUS class. I had dropped Solano and Bethany and Sac City and Cabrillo classes, namely if I was gonna end up with anything less than a B by semester’s end. Dropping all but one struck me as throwing money away.

So, perfect for Leonard Squish. In fact I kicked it up a notch: He dropped everything. As shown above.

In fact this became a regular thing. Right before the final withdrawal date, because Leonard hadn’t been doing much in his classes anyway, he dropped them all. He spent the rest of the semester hanging out, and after all the Hell Week parties wrapped up, he went home for summer or Christmas. To encounter his outraged dad.

In this strip I introduce Leonard’s dad. For lack of creativity I named him "Leonard Squish Sr.” Leonard Sr. is based on two guys. The constant rage came from Captain Trunk, Sledge Hammer’s incredibly angry, shouty captain in the sitcom Sledge Hammer!. The low opinion came from this fellow named Steve I used to carpool with to Solano College. Steve’s kids pissed him off to no end, and he was constantly ranting about how they were no damn good and regularly disappointed him. So I figured such a guy would be the perfect foil for Leonard. He was also bald, wore sunglasses all the time, and wore a thick mustache—but Leonard Sr. is hardly an exact likeness. Besides, I can’t afford the residual checks.

Leonard’s line, “If you know in your heart that you did it, it doesn’t matter,” is the usual useless sitcom-like consolation parents offer their kids whenever they lose a competition: “So what if you didn’t get a trophy? You tried your best.” Good advice in competitions and youth sports, but horrible advice when it comes to university classes. It was a lot of fun making it backfire.

Still, with the whole dropped-everything technique, I could guarantee Leonard would be a freshman forever. Or at least till Leonard Sr. got tired of paying for his shenanigans. This way, if I ever took the strip beyond college and into regular papers (like, say, Doonesbury or Bloom County, or Sac State’s own Drabble) I could still age Leonard in real time, yet explain why he never left school.

But when I dropped out of CSUS, I dropped the strip, and so much for that.