Adam Brod to graduate
Notorious free spirit reforms
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
Chalk one up for the rank-and-file pundits.
More than a year after ditching his Wood River High School
class near Madrid, Spain, and missing the last two months of his senior
year, free spirit Adam Brod has returned to the fold and is back on the
graduation track. He’s scheduled to receive his high school diploma May
31 from Boise High School.
Adam Brod Express file photo
"I like the sense of completion," he said
Monday. "But it’s not as big of a deal for me as it is for other
kids," because he’s already been living on his own in an apartment
for over nine months.
Brod, now 19, caused a stir when his Spanish class, on an
annual school-organized field trip, inadvertently returned to the United
States without him in April 2000, though he says he ran away.
In e-mail messages to his father and the Mountain
Express, he wrote that he slept only a few nights on the streets
during the more than two-month defection. He spent the days reading Anna
Karenina, walking long distances between cities and relying on new
acquaintances for food and shelter.
His classmates either applauded or scoffed, depending on
whether they viewed the escape as a free spirit’s spree or as
irresponsible rebellion. For his father, David Brod, it was something of a
nightmare, though he was stirred by his son’s sense of the dramatic.
Teachers and administrators refused to talk about their wayward student.
Brod acknowledged Monday that he felt
"notorious" when he returned to the Wood River Valley. So,
"yeah," the prospect of going back to WRHS made him a little
uncomfortable. "What do you say showing up for your fifth year?"
He had made a name for himself in other ways at WRHS, by
wearing sarongs for example, and by his own admission was considered to be
an eccentric. But he "got sick of it" and is "currently
reformed." He now has his hair cut short, no longer wears purple
sunglasses, holds down a 30-hour-a-week job as a dishwasher at Kulture
Klatsch café and pays rent. Meanwhile, he said he has been challenging
himself with some of the most difficult college-prep classes.
"I’m still not that happy with my grades," he
said, "but what was cool about [this school year] is that I actually
learned something."
After slipping into a coma for a week following a
skull-cracking fall on Bald Mountain in 1998, Brod said, his usually high
grades suffered. Recovery has been slow.
He has no immediate plans for college. Instead, he said,
he’ll spend this summer working as a dishwasher at Camp Nor’wester for
9- to 16-year-olds on the San Juan islands.
After that, who knows? Perhaps he’ll attend Flager
University in St. Augustine, Fla., the oldest town in the United States
and originally settled by the Spanish.
"It kind of reminds me of Spain," he said.
He’s thinking about studying journalism.
