Being In Control of Someone's Future

This is a rant about what's going on with my oldest son, Brandon.  If you don't like reading kid shit, you may want to skip....

Look at this ugly little misshapen cone headed freak.  This was Brandon when he was born.  I cried because I thought since I had smoked so much pot and done various other things in my first 18 years of life that I was going to be punished by having a disfigured kid.  Now that he's finally grown into his huge misshapen head, he's alright... Well, besides sporting fake bleached hair for the summer and making dorky faces......

Who would have actually though the kid would live this long?  I mean, I couldn't even take care of myself at 18, let alone a child, which by the way, I hate kids....  Mine are cool for the most part though.

Last night I had to attend high school registration.  I came away an hour and a half later feeling like my kids are retards.  In my hands right now is the paperwork to decide what could be the rest of my kid's life.  His scheduling papers.  He's in the 8th grade and is already technically behind.  Why?  Because he's an average student.  Not taking Algebra and Geometry and Biology in the 8th grade has set him behind apparently.  WTF?  When I was in school, and it wasn't THAT long ago kids didn't take classes like that in 7th and 8th grade.  Those were high school classes.  Hell, I didn't even know that they offered them.... Probably because my kids are just average. 

So, now I have to decide where to fit all of the credits that he will need to graduate into his scheduling for the next 4 years, and that's just for a basic diploma, not one that will actually get you into a decent college.  To do that, he'd have to take summer school every summer until he graduates....  WTF?  Ohio doesn't even have very stringent graduation requirements.

The kid really wants to go into the engineering program though.  They offer it at the high school level and it's a 4 year program, where in conjunction with his other studies, he'll learn all sorts of really cool stuff that will for sure come in handy if he decides more along a trade school type of secondary education.  He's actually probably above average in math and science, so maybe this is the way to go for him.  Maybe it's not.  I don't know.

I mean, I understand that this is my child and I am responsible for how he grows up and all that shit.  I'm just kind of afraid that I'll make the wrong decision and fuck up his whole high school career.......  I thought when they were in diapers, tearing up the house, that things would be so much easier when they were teenagers.  I can deal with teenage emotion and anguish and all that shit.  That's normal stuff.  What I'm having a hard time with is that in making or not making one decision about a set of classes, I could fuck up the kid's whole future.....

Can we just go back to him being the lopsided cone head baby again?????