It was with high hopes that Dane moved out of his parent’s home and into the dorms near the University of California- Santa Barbara campus.

He relished the new freedom of his surroundings and enjoyed the academic atmosphere.

He was able to split his attention between focusing on his course work and his hobbies,

essentially granting him the freedom that he’d always hoped for.

Dane pursued his studies and passions and was met with success.

His grade-point average skyrocketed in comparison to his high school grades and he was able to attend several major card tournaments he couldn’t otherwise before moving into a bigger city.

After a semester of late nights and high amounts of caffeine,

he felt like he had a grip on the college scene and that he was working towards a bright future.

Three months into his second semester of study his parents divorced.

Following on the heels of that decision was the squabbling:

over money,

the house,

and everything.

With the legally and emotionally charged mess,

the parents couldn’t agree on anything and became embroiled in a fight for Dane’s younger brother, Phillip.

One day he received a letter from his mother saying that she wouldn’t be able to help pay for his studies because of the financial strain of paying legal fees.

She offered to let him come back to her house if he couldn’t manage to make things work down in Santa Barbara.

He never received a letter,

e-mail, or call from his father,

but the bank did send him an official notification that his account would no longer be receiving any more funds from his father’s account number.

His father moved to Seattle in order to take care of his ailing parent’s estate and his mother won both the house and Phillip;

however, she had been a stay-at-home mother and had a tough time getting back into the workforce.

Eventually, she couldn’t make some of the bills and let the telephone service drop.

Dane, who didn’t know who won the house or what happened to his younger brother, was cut off from communication with his family.

Often not knowing the truth is better than knowing as sometimes, late at night,

Dane envisioned his family having reconciled and awaiting his triumphant return.

Luckily, his dorm fees and tuition had been prepaid till the end of the semester and he had a fair amount of funds left over from his part time job last summer.

He was receiving some financial aid and still had a good thousand or so dollars worth of scholarship money,

but he would be unable to pay for tuition, books, and the cost of living without quite a bit more money.

He buckled down.

He tried to throw himself into his studies and undergraduate work but was often disrupted by a deep feeling of despair and discontent.

He found that he was losing focus and began to wonder what would happen if he simply quit.

He was doing the right thing,

staying there and going to college, right?

Should he go back to his family?

Does he really need a Bachelors’s or Major?

At this point, Dane did what any normal college student would do: go on a binge.

Usually, this would mean going out with some friends and drinking until they started to suffer from alcohol poisoning,

but in this case, as with most everything else in Dane’s life, things went differently.

He longed to escape all of his troubles and for him, infantilism was his choice means of escape.

Rather than go drinking,

take drugs or use women he often just went back to his private dorm,

diapered himself up, and cuddled with his stuffed moose until the morning.

Everything always seemed better on those mornings.

And so it was that Dane approached finals week.

The course load grew enormous with finals and end-of-term projects coming due

Dane still had no new source of income or even a place to stay once the dorms booted everyone out for two weeks of mandatory cleaning.

Dane awoke at his desk, looked at his wristwatch, and dashed out the door.

It looked like he was going to be late for class.

“My previous assistant lasted two weeks.

This one lasted three days,” complained Serra,

“Why can’t human resources get me someone more competent?”

Serra had already had a very bad day and things weren’t looking up.

It started with her waking up late,

arriving at work to find that her assistant had quit,

and culminated in this argument with her boss.

Her work was always impeccable, her assistants’ work, on the other hand, not so much.

This last one couldn’t even handle his first assignment and embarrassed the company over a simple task.

How hard can it be to get coffee,

file papers

and handle one simple case study?

To top it all off, he didn’t even have the grace to quit like a normal fellow.

Instead, he jumped from the roof of the building and inflicted damage on their well-manicured lawn and corporate logo.

“Why are you complaining to me?

Your work was sub-par and because of resulting damages to company property your pay is getting docked until repairs are complete,” voiced Vice President Christensen calmly.

“I don’t think my pay should be docked because of his stupidity!

Besides, it was only some cosmetic damage.”

“Cosmetic Damage? He obliterated the J in our logo!”

Truth be told, the assistant had also caused a bit of pitting in the sidewalk and broke a window,

but there was no reason to quibble over details. “My decision on that is final.”

There was a pause as Serra started and disregarded several responses.

She eventually settled on a nod.

“Was there anything else, Serra?” the Vice President asked after rubbing his temples a bit.

“Well, about my assistant… I want another one.”

Instead of responding with ‘Why do you sound like a child wanting a new puppy’

Christensen chose the more tactful “Why are you asking me? That’s Gabe’s department.”

“Actually, would you mind if I interviewed my next assistant personally?

I know it’s against company policy,

but it might cut down on my high turnover rate,”

and give me a short break, Serra added internally.

“Sure, tell Gabe I said it was okay.”

With that, Serra was dismissed.

She turned to leave and had to restrain herself from skipping as she neared the door.

“Just don’t slack off on anything,”

Christensen called out behind her.

Serra’s shoulders fell.

This brings us to the present, with Dane Bishop shedding away the heavy course load in the last days of finals week,

and finishing up his Socio-Cultural Anthropology final.

“What is the primary concern of the AAA and all successful Cultural Anthropologists?” repeated Dane under his breath.

An easy last question, maybe Coach Robby is slipping.

Dane scrawled down “The well-being of their focus group” and turned over the last page of the test.

He looked at the blank back of the sheet of paper, then smiled.

He was the first person done.

He decided to skip reviewing his test answers; it was bad luck.

Dane tossed his pencil case and binder into his backpack and walked down the row of desks until he came to someone with their feet up on a chair across the aisle.

Rather than disturb the student he jumped down to a different row of seats and walked to the stairs leading to the exit of the lecture hall and the Professor’s desk.

Professor Robinson was a slightly balding and informal man who stood six feet four inches in height.

He preferred that people call him Coach Robby because it was one of the few perks he got as the Coach for the Cheerleading squad.

The middle-aged man looked up from his desk and noted Dane’s presence.

“Finished already?”

“Yeah,” Dane said flashing the Coach a half-smile.

The professor looked back over his papers, “Have you ironed out that student aid issue yet?”

“I’ve confirmed that I’ll be getting some,

but I’m not sure if’ll be enough to make ends meet.

My funds are pretty short and I need to find work.”

“I heard about a job from a friend of mine, you interested?”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t hurt to look into,” …after-all,

I could always move back to Humboldt I guess,

Dane thought to himself. “What’re the specifics?”

“Well, it’s an internship of sorts…”