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Some people hit their peak in high school. You never know what can happen. A bad early marriage? Bad career choice? You never know.

My freshman year in high school, we had a very popular senior who was student body president. You would expect him to be a big success in life. A few years later he went to prison for killing a couple of local teen-age girls. I think he was drunk or high. Just a very weird tragedy.

You never can tell.

Given this is set in America maybe he couldn't afford college or something traumatic happened in his life or he got a woman pregnant and then married her and just took whatever jobs were on offer. I can't recall why he was man of the year either, perhaps he was one of these school sports stars who didn't go in for studying?

His character was really just used as warning to the teens watching.

1) The future is not set.

2) Never underestimate a person because they hold a lowly job.

Don't knock it. Maintenance people can make a lot of money.

Maybe it was his infatuation with high school

In "Election," one character became a teacher because he liked high school so much

And in real life, one of the "man of the year" types, a football player and honest-to-goodness all-around good guy, wound up teaching at our old high school and clearly couldn't be happier

Tell you something, Carl sure didn't look unhappy with his lot in life