The Life and Times

The story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. And also because I'm not sure about the statute of limitations on stuff like this...

Way back in the heady years of the early 70's, 1972 to be precise, Nixon was soon to be threatened with impeachment, we were all scared as can be we would be sent off to Viet Nam in a few years, M.A.S.H was a brand new T.V. show nobody thought was funny at first, (you see, before reruns it didn't have a laugh track), The Godfather was the smash hit at the movies, T-Rex was everybodies favorite band, and Derek and the Dominoes were having a big hit with Layla, and because of that very song, I wanted so bad to become a rock star, that I decided that  year, 1972, I was going to Hollywood someday, and was going to make my name shine bright in those tinseltown lights as a musician. Kids...

I was going to school in Fort Worth, Texas at Springstone Middle School. No cell phones, no iPods, this was before CD's and even cassettes, hell, we only had records and a few crummy stretchy 8-tracks for music, for cryin' out loud. No video games, or computers, we all played sports, and that meant football, basketball, and baseball, (except the freaks, and we chased them around the playground enough for them to all get track medals).

The War on Drugs was just in it's first year, barely getting started, so we did manage to find all kinds of mischief to get into...

Just like today, I rode to school, and home again, in fact I rode just about everywhere, on a beat up old brown and green ten speed Dawes english racer bicycle, I thought I was cool because I had purchased a Brooks leather racing saddle for $20.00 new and installed. That hard leather saddle busted my ass for the entire 8th grade year, but it finally got broke in about the time I gave up riding to high school the next year as a freshman, because that was just not cool.

Anyway, it was spring, and back then, there were no air conditioners in the classes. Seriously,  it was always hotter than the blazes in that building that late in the year, and nobody really tried to do too much in the way of serious instruction. The building was an old monolithic three story brute of a place, built back when imposing structures were the style. I remember it always smelled of sweat, piss, and fear, like jails and old schools always do, but with a rich overtone of old concrete funk and wet mildew for a finishing touch. The class I was attending was what we refferred to as "cincher" , that meant easy, because it was being taught by a wonderful old teacher named Mr. Gorge.

Mr. Gorge was an retired Navy man, and he was mostly prone to two things. Falling asleep in class, or rambling for the whole hour about just about anything that came to his mind. And let me tell you, that man had traveled the world in the Navy. He told us stories of faraway places, life on a Navy ship, ports of call he had visited, and really deliciously creepy and gruesome things as well. He had been a WWII sailor, and had served at Midway, I think.

"War is Hell", he told us often.

He had a thick latino brogue, but was as literate and well read as anyone I ever met. He introduced us to Joyce, Twain, and even Coleridge, which I'm pretty sure would get your ass in deep dutch these days, exposing young impressionable 8th grade minds to such literary scoundels as these men. We didn't have lockdowns, metal detectors, piss tests, or cops in the hallways, man, those were different times.

We had pretty much decided sex was gonna be really cool, but only a few of us had even been lucky enough to have experimented with it. We had also discovered pot, boones farm, and ripple, and could usually find some wino down on Vickery Blvd. to get us a bottle, if we bought one for him, too. And somebody or other's big brother usually had a matchbox of what I would barely call pot today, that we could buy for the massive price of $10.00.

But we were good kids. See, the hippies, the coming revolution, womens lib,  and the Viet Nam War dominated the news, and we just did what the society, through the news, our teachers, coaches, and Vice-Principals, told us constantly NOT to do.

Nostalgia was unheard of, we all loved the Beatles, and we all knew they were gonna get back together any day now. Bell bottoms on our pants were stylishly huge, and were only cool if they were  so big that you could not see your four inch platform shoes underneath them, and life was about as good as it gets.

The aformentioned hippies congregated at the local duck pond park, and did hippie things, but none of us had dared to grow our hair that long, and most of the local establishment either looked like Mr Burns from the Simpsons, or just like old country western singers do today, with greasy slicked back hair, long sideburns, cowboy boots, and a pack of lucky strikes or winstons rolled up in their short sleeve button down shirts.

Anyway, this particular day, the class was being especially unruly, and Mr. Gorge had had to call out two or three boys for a few minor disiplinary cautions. Yeah, I admit I was one of them, being the class cut-up and having a close friendship with one of the most wicked boys I ever knew, Bart B. didn't help.

I had a reputation among the teachers as a bright, but hard to manage, and easily bored pupil. Bart and I were semi-famous for dirty tricks and such, but we just wanted to have some fun, you know?

Well, just as we were being asked to stand up and take our fair share of the shame and embarrassment of Mr. Gorge's derisions for talking in class, the old crackly Intercom system speaker up on the wall called out..."Mr. Gorge, come to the Principals office, please".

He looked at that speaker on the wall with the consternation fitting for a king deprived of his chance to behead a peasant, but before he left the room, he turned back, pointed a massive fat and knarled finger at us, and said..."Stay in your seats, children, I don't want to hear a peep out of anyone till I return." Yeah. like that was gonna happen.

As soon as his massive and heavy steps stopped echoing from the hall, the whole class exploded in righteous and anarchic mischief. Spitwads flew across the room, girl's pigtail's were pulled by brutish little fingers, and Bart and I looked on with a certain sense of pleasure and satisfaction from so recently escaping the teachers wrath, just by the skin of our teeth, and due to nothing more than pure luck and timing.

Now, here I have to say looking back, that this was one of those days that changes a kid. Forever. Not me, or Bart, maybe, or the thirty odd students now running back and forth and up and down between the desks, but for two boys in particular, fate, in the dark and sinister form of Bart B. and myself, would soon lay it's cold, clammy hands upon them, and change their lives forever.

As I luxuriated in my crummy graffiti covered wooden desk, as only a gangly 8th grader can, I looked over at Bart. He had a particular demonic smile I recognized that meant as much as, "well how do you do, boys, let us bring some wickedness to the surroundings", on his face.

In his hand he held a tack, a single carpet tack, a tiny thing really, a small half inch type of carpet tack in reality, but in my long held tortured memories of that day, a mean and malevolent looking thing as I have ever seen.

Now Bart's specialty was incriminating other kids, and getting them in scads of trouble. He was the perfect angel to his parents, and to teachers and principals alike, and to most people who know him today, they would be aghast if they knew the real Bart as a young man. He was evil incarnate at times, and I felt awfully proud to be his accomplice in most of his shady games. He could throw a goofy face at a kid from ten paces, and you could place a good sized bet in Vegas that that same kid would get called out for laughing in study hall, while Bart remained stony faced like a professional poker player betting the moon. He was money, he was just magic that way.

But on this particular day, he had his eyes on a particular victim, more than that, two victim's, a double play if you will, and he showed that carpet tack he grasped so knowingly, to a poor lost soul of a kid named Chuck, that wanted desperately to be as cool as we constantly told him we were. Chuck would always be the patsy or fall guy for our games, he was a little heavier, a little slower, a little less sharp to see the dark side, the potential harsh consequences, of our sometimes evil childish pranks.

Bart leaned over like a practised card sharp, almost silently whispering something in Chuck's ear, and grinned maniacally, as he pointed out the intended recipient of this sticky gift.

Poor, poor, Pedro. If only he had been sick that day, if only he had stayed in homeroom a little longer, his life might have been different. He was one of the good kids. He studied hard, he wasn't a stuck up jock like us, in fact he was too slight to even play sports. So, why he was chosen I will never know. Fate, I think, just wanted to rip on him, and I tell myself we were just the messengers of that awful sharp pointed telegram of destiny.

And, most importantly, he was not sitting in his desk, and was occupied talking to somebody else, and looking away as the weapon of ass destruction was delivered to the sweating little hand of Chuck.

Chuck had a snickering kind of laugh, kind of raspy, and could barely contain his noisy glee to be included in such a horrible stunt. With the skill and timing of hitmen, both Bart and I raised a single finger to our lips for stealth and silence, then pointed at the exact spot where the carpet tack would have maximum effectiveness and total penetration, if Chuck would only contain himself, and stick that pointy sucker down in Pedro's desk seat. As we leaned back in our desks, and waited, little did we know we were changing two boy's lives for better, or most likely worse, on that hot May day.

We watched as the room became more and more animated. Would Pedro see the sneaky present we had had specially delivered to him? Would he brush it away before sitting down? Not on this day he wouldn't.

Silent like the lambs we weren't, we watched as Pedro sat down, right in his seat. He didn't just sit down, he landed. Many kids had a way of sliding into a desk, and if he had chosen that approach, that day, well, no one can say what might of been. Instead, he landed HARD.

He dropped into that desk seat like a heavily laden helicopter transporting a full load of something just a bit too heavy for an elegant landing.

POW! That sucker stuck in his butt, and it stuck good and hard. Chuck had made the placement exactly correct for a perfect, dead center career killing punch of the right cheek of Pedro's posterior.

At first, it was like those scenes in war movies where everything becomes focused on a single thing, and pulls the focus in tight, and sound is an afterthought. Three young hoodlums watched in first glee, then blending to a bit of anxiety, and finally heading into full scale alarm as we realized the awful and total effectiveness of this hateful trick, just lately played on unsuspecting Pedro, by our soon to be severely chastised playmate, Chuck.

The sound of Pedro's agonized yelping seemed to be coming down a long hall, a train tunnel almost, as the young scholar realized that something terrible had punctured his derriere. It was actually simply  the doppler effect as his throat was being turned around and around  by his head, as he reeled about to try to see just what was happening, you know, back there.

Pedro shot out that desk like, well, I saw a man shot out of a cannon once at the circus when I was 10, and Pedro was much quicker, with significantly more velocity, and simply tons more acceleration. As he danced like he had a miillion or more bees stinging his bum repeatedly about the room, gradually most of the kids in the class dropped their mouths open and stared disbelievingly at what was transpiring right in front of them.

Bart and I had already sat upright in our chairs and folded our hands on our desks in anticipation of what surely must come next. As the sound of poor suffering Pedro got louder, the class became icy still, and unearthly quiet. Try as he might, no amount of pulling, clawing, screaming or cursing, in equal parts Spanish and English, seemed to have the slightest effect on that carpet tack's tenacious grip on, or in, the thickest part of the muscle of his gluteous maximus.

He circled around and around the front of the room, grabbing like a crazed madman at his ass, shouting things I only thought I knew how to say at that tender age, as Bart and I exchanged the glance of warriors fully expecting a terrible onslaught of withering enemy return fire.

And poor Chuck just...sat there, almost unaware of his hideous, and rapidly approaching fate, for his hand in this awful fiasco.

Now I have heard, or read somewhere, that the bull elephant, and also the water buffalo, of Africa, are both said to "bellow" when angered. This I cannot confirm or deny. But the sound made by our sweet old retired Navy history teacher, as he walked into that classroom, and saw the one mexican boy in his class, screaming and cursing to beat the band, as the child grasped desperately at his own now twitching and spasming backside, to try and relieve the agonizing pain he was experiencing, could well and truly only be called bellowing.

How he knew what had transpired, I can't say. But he knew...

Mr. Gorge LOUDLY, with the full authority and tone of a man who was used to military discipline, bellowed at the top of his lungs in the direction of the class..."WHO? I repeat, WHO put the tack in Pedro Neavis Gonzales' seat?"

I will never forget that moment as long as I live. As tiny beads of guilt ridden sweat rolled down my forehead, I could barely move. No one made a sound, not one child chirped, not one student sounded off. But with the awesome skill and perfect precision of a Chinese Olympic drill team, the whole class, every single long since forgotten child, every single one, turned their heads, as if attached to only one body, and stared right at....Chuck.

My heart raced incessantly as I realized NO ONE knew of mine and Bart's very slight but still sinister complicity in the whole sordid affair. Not one student in the whole classroom had seen us chide and tempt Chuck with the task he was being set up to completely take the rap for. But two things led to his total undoing.

First, someone HAD seen Chuck place the tack right before Pedro's posterial arrival, and as Pedro danced the dance of the tortured all over that hot steamy Texas classroom, word had spread quickly, as only children can spread it, that Chuck had in fact, done the dirty deed.

And secondly, Chuck just had a guilty face.

The look of disgust, mixed with rage, tempered by outrageous and protective anger for a boy of his own heritage, on the face of my history teacher, will haunt me till three days after I am dead.

Chuck quickly realized the fix was in, and that he had been absolutely fingered by every single kid in that classroom. Including me and Bart. We couldn't help it, it was instinctive. We were just staring at Chuck in disbelief at our double lightning strike of luck, and his imminent downfall, all occuring in the short space of a few minutes.

The scene in my mind nows shifts to a slow motion sort of Sam Peckinpah finale reel, as the enraged teacher tries to both comfort and relieve the suffering of the afflicted Pedro, as well as bodily lift Chuck out of his seat by the closest earlobe Chuck possesed. This was a man used to the horrors of war, the strangeness of anything the far east had to offer, but he was LIVID at the shameful transgression he was seeing acted out in his classroom. As he put his arm around Pedro's shoulder, Pedro was drug closer and closer to the desk Chuck would only occupy for an instant more. Then Mr. Gorge reached over and uplifted the now terrified Chuck completely out of his desk, by his earlobe, I swear, and as Chuck just hung there suspended in midair for a moment, I couldn't help but think of a little squealing piglet, hung up on the butcher's sharp and merciless meathook, and I truly shuddered for him to the depths of my soul.

I shot one furtive look at the ringleader of this whole grimy mess, but Bart was perfectly and astonishingly composed. That dude was bad.

Then the words rumbled, no, more like exploded. from the incensed history teachers mouth..."YOU..Chuck...are in quite some trouble, my friend", and he let Chuck slip from his grasp momentarily, only to grab him by a more substantial portion of Chuck's now quaking frame, and drug both boys, both now kicking and screaming, out the door of the classroom, and down the hallway.

Even now, the aftermath of that moment is terrible and wretched to my memory. I felt awful, just awful, for the plight of the two obvious victims, Pedro and Chuck, but there was also such a surreal and bizarre air in the room at this time, after what our young eyes had just witnessed, that it was only just a matter of seconds befor the whole class erupted in almost frenzied and side splitting laughter.

Appparently the school nurse had been able to quickly assess the entire situation concerning the interloper in Pedro's bottom, and relieved him in as just as quick a fashion. His voice died down, just as the plaintive cries of Chuck could be heard coming from the echoing halls, emanating from deep inside the Vice Principal's office, as louder and louder Chuck proclaimed his complete and total innocence of any wrong doing.

These hearfelt but futile sounds were quickly drowned out by the singular and still hard to remember sound of at least 5,000 hard blows with a paddle being dispensed with true relish by the now also enraged Vice Principal.

Then the bell rang, and reality reigned once more in the classroom I was occupying. All the kids looked about at each other, and then scurried out of the door like rats off a burning, sinking ship. The hallways were instantly filled with that high pitched drone of sound that is normal between classes in any school, and I sped away from that classroom, as fast as my shoes would allow on the hard, slick, cement floor.

Perhaps, Pedro was not really as badly injured as I might have feared, but I never once spoke to him again, fearing he might know somewhere in his heart of my small part in that horrid practical joke gone horribly wrong. Bart and I remained good friends till college, but my heart was never in another scheme he concocted the same as that day, and then wouldn't you know it, he was the one who made it to Hollywood, years later, not me. I wish him the best, and hope I never get on his bad side, for he could be murderously deviant in his quest for practical jokes, at least back in the day.

I wish him well.

Poor Chuck was never the same. God willing, he will learn to live a more normal life someday, but I fear we put him on a path in life he was only marginally willing at first to tread. And me, I am just a wisened old man, sitting in front of a computer tapping out my confession to one of the most amazing, hilarious, and embarrassing events of my life.

Peace.

The story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. And also because I'm not sure about the statute of limitations on stuff like this...

Way back in the heady years of the early 70's, 1972 to be precise, Nixon was soon to be threatened with impeachment, we were all scared as can be we would be sent off to Viet Nam in a few years, M.A.S.H was a brand new T.V. show nobody thought was funny at first, (you see, before reruns it didn't have a laugh track), The Godfather was the smash hit at the movies, T-Rex was everybodies favorite band, and Derek and the Dominoes were having a big hit with Layla, and because of that very song, I wanted so bad to become a rock star, that I decided that  year, 1972, I was going to Hollywood someday, and was going to make my name shine bright in those tinseltown lights as a musician. Kids...

I was going to school in Fort Worth, Texas at Springstone Middle School. No cell phones, no iPods, this was before CD's and even cassettes, hell, we only had records and a few crummy stretchy 8-tracks for music, for cryin' out loud. No video games, or computers, we all played sports, and that meant football, basketball, and baseball, (except the freaks, and we chased them around the playground enough for them to all get track medals).

The War on Drugs was just in it's first year, barely getting started, so we did manage to find all kinds of mischief to get into...

Just like today, I rode to school, and home again, in fact I rode just about everywhere, on a beat up old brown and green ten speed Dawes english racer bicycle, I thought I was cool because I had purchased a Brooks leather racing saddle for $20.00 new and installed. That hard leather saddle busted my ass for the entire 8th grade year, but it finally got broke in about the time I gave up riding to high school the next year as a freshman, because that was just not cool.

Anyway, it was spring, and back then, there were no air conditioners in the classes. Seriously,  it was always hotter than the blazes in that building that late in the year, and nobody really tried to do too much in the way of serious instruction. The building was an old monolithic three story brute of a place, built back when imposing structures were the style. I remember it always smelled of sweat, piss, and fear, like jails and old schools always do, but with a rich overtone of old concrete funk and wet mildew for a finishing touch. The class I was attending was what we refferred to as "cincher" , that meant easy, because it was being taught by a wonderful old teacher named Mr. Gorge.

Mr. Gorge was an retired Navy man, and he was mostly prone to two things. Falling asleep in class, or rambling for the whole hour about just about anything that came to his mind. And let me tell you, that man had traveled the world in the Navy. He told us stories of faraway places, life on a Navy ship, ports of call he had visited, and really deliciously creepy and gruesome things as well. He had been a WWII sailor, and had served at Midway, I think.

"War is Hell", he told us often.

He had a thick latino brogue, but was as literate and well read as anyone I ever met. He introduced us to Joyce, Twain, and even Coleridge, which I'm pretty sure would get your ass in deep dutch these days, exposing young impressionable 8th grade minds to such literary scoundels as these men. We didn't have lockdowns, metal detectors, piss tests, or cops in the hallways, man, those were different times.

We had pretty much decided sex was gonna be really cool, but only a few of us had even been lucky enough to have experimented with it. We had also discovered pot, boones farm, and ripple, and could usually find some wino down on Vickery Blvd. to get us a bottle, if we bought one for him, too. And somebody or other's big brother usually had a matchbox of what I would barely call pot today, that we could buy for the massive price of $10.00.

But we were good kids. See, the hippies, the coming revolution, womens lib,  and the Viet Nam War dominated the news, and we just did what the society, through the news, our teachers, coaches, and Vice-Principals, told us constantly NOT to do.

Nostalgia was unheard of, we all loved the Beatles, and we all knew they were gonna get back together any day now. Bell bottoms on our pants were stylishly huge, and were only cool if they were  so big that you could not see your four inch platform shoes underneath them, and life was about as good as it gets.

The aformentioned hippies congregated at the local duck pond park, and did hippie things, but none of us had dared to grow our hair that long, and most of the local establishment either looked like Mr Burns from the Simpsons, or just like old country western singers do today, with greasy slicked back hair, long sideburns, cowboy boots, and a pack of lucky strikes or winstons rolled up in their short sleeve button down shirts.

Anyway, this particular day, the class was being especially unruly, and Mr. Gorge had had to call out two or three boys for a few minor disiplinary cautions. Yeah, I admit I was one of them, being the class cut-up and having a close friendship with one of the most wicked boys I ever knew, Bart B. didn't help.

I had a reputation among the teachers as a bright, but hard to manage, and easily bored pupil. Bart and I were semi-famous for dirty tricks and such, but we just wanted to have some fun, you know?

Well, just as we were being asked to stand up and take our fair share of the shame and embarrassment of Mr. Gorge's derisions for talking in class, the old crackly Intercom system speaker up on the wall called out..."Mr. Gorge, come to the Principals office, please".

He looked at that speaker on the wall with the consternation fitting for a king deprived of his chance to behead a peasant, but before he left the room, he turned back, pointed a massive fat and knarled finger at us, and said..."Stay in your seats, children, I don't want to hear a peep out of anyone till I return." Yeah. like that was gonna happen.

As soon as his massive and heavy steps stopped echoing from the hall, the whole class exploded in righteous and anarchic mischief. Spitwads flew across the room, girl's pigtail's were pulled by brutish little fingers, and Bart and I looked on with a certain sense of pleasure and satisfaction from so recently escaping the teachers wrath, just by the skin of our teeth, and due to nothing more than pure luck and timing.

Now, here I have to say looking back, that this was one of those days that changes a kid. Forever. Not me, or Bart, maybe, or the thirty odd students now running back and forth and up and down between the desks, but for two boys in particular, fate, in the dark and sinister form of Bart B. and myself, would soon lay it's cold, clammy hands upon them, and change their lives forever.

As I luxuriated in my crummy graffiti covered wooden desk, as only a gangly 8th grader can, I looked over at Bart. He had a particular demonic smile I recognized that meant as much as, "well how do you do, boys, let us bring some wickedness to the surroundings", on his face.

In his hand he held a tack, a single carpet tack, a tiny thing really, a small half inch type of carpet tack in reality, but in my long held tortured memories of that day, a mean and malevolent looking thing as I have ever seen.

Now Bart's specialty was incriminating other kids, and getting them in scads of trouble. He was the perfect angel to his parents, and to teachers and principals alike, and to most people who know him today, they would be aghast if they knew the real Bart as a young man. He was evil incarnate at times, and I felt awfully proud to be his accomplice in most of his shady games. He could throw a goofy face at a kid from ten paces, and you could place a good sized bet in Vegas that that same kid would get called out for laughing in study hall, while Bart remained stony faced like a professional poker player betting the moon. He was money, he was just magic that way.

But on this particular day, he had his eyes on a particular victim, more than that, two victim's, a double play if you will, and he showed that carpet tack he grasped so knowingly, to a poor lost soul of a kid named Chuck, that wanted desperately to be as cool as we constantly told him we were. Chuck would always be the patsy or fall guy for our games, he was a little heavier, a little slower, a little less sharp to see the dark side, the potential harsh consequences, of our sometimes evil childish pranks.

Bart leaned over like a practised card sharp, almost silently whispering something in Chuck's ear, and grinned maniacally, as he pointed out the intended recipient of this sticky gift.

Poor, poor, Pedro. If only he had been sick that day, if only he had stayed in homeroom a little longer, his life might have been different. He was one of the good kids. He studied hard, he wasn't a stuck up jock like us, in fact he was too slight to even play sports. So, why he was chosen I will never know. Fate, I think, just wanted to rip on him, and I tell myself we were just the messengers of that awful sharp pointed telegram of destiny.

And, most importantly, he was not sitting in his desk, and was occupied talking to somebody else, and looking away as the weapon of ass destruction was delivered to the sweating little hand of Chuck.

Chuck had a snickering kind of laugh, kind of raspy, and could barely contain his noisy glee to be included in such a horrible stunt. With the skill and timing of hitmen, both Bart and I raised a single finger to our lips for stealth and silence, then pointed at the exact spot where the carpet tack would have maximum effectiveness and total penetration, if Chuck would only contain himself, and stick that pointy sucker down in Pedro's desk seat. As we leaned back in our desks, and waited, little did we know we were changing two boy's lives for better, or most likely worse, on that hot May day.

We watched as the room became more and more animated. Would Pedro see the sneaky present we had had specially delivered to him? Would he brush it away before sitting down? Not on this day he wouldn't.

Silent like the lambs we weren't, we watched as Pedro sat down, right in his seat. He didn't just sit down, he landed. Many kids had a way of sliding into a desk, and if he had chosen that approach, that day, well, no one can say what might of been. Instead, he landed HARD.

He dropped into that desk seat like a heavily laden helicopter transporting a full load of something just a bit too heavy for an elegant landing.

POW! That sucker stuck in his butt, and it stuck good and hard. Chuck had made the placement exactly correct for a perfect, dead center career killing punch of the right cheek of Pedro's posterior.

At first, it was like those scenes in war movies where everything becomes focused on a single thing, and pulls the focus in tight, and sound is an afterthought. Three young hoodlums watched in first glee, then blending to a bit of anxiety, and finally heading into full scale alarm as we realized the awful and total effectiveness of this hateful trick, just lately played on unsuspecting Pedro, by our soon to be severely chastised playmate, Chuck.

The sound of Pedro's agonized yelping seemed to be coming down a long hall, a train tunnel almost, as the young scholar realized that something terrible had punctured his derriere. It was actually simply  the doppler effect as his throat was being turned around and around  by his head, as he reeled about to try to see just what was happening, you know, back there.

Pedro shot out that desk like, well, I saw a man shot out of a cannon once at the circus when I was 10, and Pedro was much quicker, with significantly more velocity, and simply tons more acceleration. As he danced like he had a miillion or more bees stinging his bum repeatedly about the room, gradually most of the kids in the class dropped their mouths open and stared disbelievingly at what was transpiring right in front of them.

Bart and I had already sat upright in our chairs and folded our hands on our desks in anticipation of what surely must come next. As the sound of poor suffering Pedro got louder, the class became icy still, and unearthly quiet. Try as he might, no amount of pulling, clawing, screaming or cursing, in equal parts Spanish and English, seemed to have the slightest effect on that carpet tack's tenacious grip on, or in, the thickest part of the muscle of his gluteous maximus.

He circled around and around the front of the room, grabbing like a crazed madman at his ass, shouting things I only thought I knew how to say at that tender age, as Bart and I exchanged the glance of warriors fully expecting a terrible onslaught of withering enemy return fire.

And poor Chuck just...sat there, almost unaware of his hideous, and rapidly approaching fate, for his hand in this awful fiasco.

Now I have heard, or read somewhere, that the bull elephant, and also the water buffalo, of Africa, are both said to "bellow" when angered. This I cannot confirm or deny. But the sound made by our sweet old retired Navy history teacher, as he walked into that classroom, and saw the one mexican boy in his class, screaming and cursing to beat the band, as the child grasped desperately at his own now twitching and spasming backside, to try and relieve the agonizing pain he was experiencing, could well and truly only be called bellowing.

How he knew what had transpired, I can't say. But he knew...

Mr. Gorge LOUDLY, with the full authority and tone of a man who was used to military discipline, bellowed at the top of his lungs in the direction of the class..."WHO? I repeat, WHO put the tack in Pedro Neavis Gonzales' seat?"

I will never forget that moment as long as I live. As tiny beads of guilt ridden sweat rolled down my forehead, I could barely move. No one made a sound, not one child chirped, not one student sounded off. But with the awesome skill and perfect precision of a Chinese Olympic drill team, the whole class, every single long since forgotten child, every single one, turned their heads, as if attached to only one body, and stared right at....Chuck.

My heart raced incessantly as I realized NO ONE knew of mine and Bart's very slight but still sinister complicity in the whole sordid affair. Not one student in the whole classroom had seen us chide and tempt Chuck with the task he was being set up to completely take the rap for. But two things led to his total undoing.

First, someone HAD seen Chuck place the tack right before Pedro's posterial arrival, and as Pedro danced the dance of the tortured all over that hot steamy Texas classroom, word had spread quickly, as only children can spread it, that Chuck had in fact, done the dirty deed.

And secondly, Chuck just had a guilty face.

The look of disgust, mixed with rage, tempered by outrageous and protective anger for a boy of his own heritage, on the face of my history teacher, will haunt me till three days after I am dead.

Chuck quickly realized the fix was in, and that he had been absolutely fingered by every single kid in that classroom. Including me and Bart. We couldn't help it, it was instinctive. We were just staring at Chuck in disbelief at our double lightning strike of luck, and his imminent downfall, all occuring in the short space of a few minutes.

The scene in my mind nows shifts to a slow motion sort of Sam Peckinpah finale reel, as the enraged teacher tries to both comfort and relieve the suffering of the afflicted Pedro, as well as bodily lift Chuck out of his seat by the closest earlobe Chuck possesed. This was a man used to the horrors of war, the strangeness of anything the far east had to offer, but he was LIVID at the shameful transgression he was seeing acted out in his classroom. As he put his arm around Pedro's shoulder, Pedro was drug closer and closer to the desk Chuck would only occupy for an instant more. Then Mr. Gorge reached over and uplifted the now terrified Chuck completely out of his desk, by his earlobe, I swear, and as Chuck just hung there suspended in midair for a moment, I couldn't help but think of a little squealing piglet, hung up on the butcher's sharp and merciless meathook, and I truly shuddered for him to the depths of my soul.

I shot one furtive look at the ringleader of this whole grimy mess, but Bart was perfectly and astonishingly composed. That dude was bad.

Then the words rumbled, no, more like exploded. from the incensed history teachers mouth..."YOU..Chuck...are in quite some trouble, my friend", and he let Chuck slip from his grasp momentarily, only to grab him by a more substantial portion of Chuck's now quaking frame, and drug both boys, both now kicking and screaming, out the door of the classroom, and down the hallway.

Even now, the aftermath of that moment is terrible and wretched to my memory. I felt awful, just awful, for the plight of the two obvious victims, Pedro and Chuck, but there was also such a surreal and bizarre air in the room at this time, after what our young eyes had just witnessed, that it was only just a matter of seconds befor the whole class erupted in almost frenzied and side splitting laughter.

Appparently the school nurse had been able to quickly assess the entire situation concerning the interloper in Pedro's bottom, and relieved him in as just as quick a fashion. His voice died down, just as the plaintive cries of Chuck could be heard coming from the echoing halls, emanating from deep inside the Vice Principal's office, as louder and louder Chuck proclaimed his complete and total innocence of any wrong doing.

These hearfelt but futile sounds were quickly drowned out by the singular and still hard to remember sound of at least 5,000 hard blows with a paddle being dispensed with true relish by the now also enraged Vice Principal.

Then the bell rang, and reality reigned once more in the classroom I was occupying. All the kids looked about at each other, and then scurried out of the door like rats off a burning, sinking ship. The hallways were instantly filled with that high pitched drone of sound that is normal between classes in any school, and I sped away from that classroom, as fast as my shoes would allow on the hard, slick, cement floor.

Perhaps, Pedro was not really as badly injured as I might have feared, but I never once spoke to him again, fearing he might know somewhere in his heart of my small part in that horrid practical joke gone horribly wrong. Bart and I remained good friends till college, but my heart was never in another scheme he concocted the same as that day, and then wouldn't you know it, he was the one who made it to Hollywood, years later, not me. I wish him the best, and hope I never get on his bad side, for he could be murderously deviant in his quest for practical jokes, at least back in the day.

I wish him well.

Poor Chuck was never the same. God willing, he will learn to live a more normal life someday, but I fear we put him on a path in life he was only marginally willing at first to tread. And me, I am just a wisened old man, sitting in front of a computer tapping out my confession to one of the most amazing, hilarious, and embarrassing events of my life.

Peace.

I'm such a lucky guy. I come from long lived and fiesty folks going back 3 or more generations. I knew and learned much from both my great grandfathers, and one of my great grandmothers. Due to my mother's remarrying when I was 8 years old, I had three wonderful and amazing grandfathers in my lifetime. I also sat and learned at both of my grandmother's feet a lot when I was young.  Along with two great men who are proud to call me their son, I have the most amazing mother any man could ever hope to have.

You could say I have had an exceptionally broad number of ancestral influences in my life. But as I grew up, and got busy with the business of living, one by one most of them slipped away from me, and it seems looking back, I was too busy to hardly even notice.

Lately, I was feeling so alone, without purpose, so lost and afraid, I admit, I thought I was losing it. My life, my health, my career, my very reasons for living had come into question more than once.

And I realized all those wonderful ancestors, as fabulous as they were, were only just a few of the people who had helped me to get to this place in my life. Looking at my life, they were so many famous and not so famous writers, some willing and almost unwilling mentors, obscure country and western singers, long dead and forgotten songwriters, and not a few poets, even some grumpy old football coaches, long suffering teachers, and of course, all my friends, old and new, some now gone, dead, or departed, that had all infuenced me in so many deep and lasting ways, that I decided to sit down and take a little time off, just to kind of gather my notes for the next half of my life.

And make no mistake, I have not been an unmitigated success. I have tasted some sweet things some people can only dream of, but I missed out on other things so many people would just take for granted.

I have driven an expensive fast car on a perfect Hollywood night down Laurel Canyon Road, but today I cannot even drive an automobile. I have held perhaps more than my share of radiant and beautiful women, but they are all gone now, and I have never had one of my own children, to hold in my arms, to raise, or watch them grow up.

I have lived on my own beautiful mountain in the wilds of Montana where the explorers Lewis and Clark walked, but I never held onto my successes very well, and had to leave so many wonderful places like that beautiful mountain, in shame and disgrace.

I have at times lived in lavish houses, with gorgeous furnishings, and had in fact, all the big boy toys available to me, but I lost so many friends and family along the way, that those things, don't even rate remembering now.

Adn I've been to the very doors of insanity from drugs, liquor, lust for fame, and greed, but something, or someone, always walked me home, held me tight till the wretched fever was gone, and tucked me in, and I awoke to a brand new day, time and time again.

I never finished college, or ever quite won the big brass ring of fame and fortune that seems to be the hallmark of the American dream.

But, make no mistake, I have lived like few others I have ever known, and if I made mistakes, they were my mistakes, and I tried to gut it up, and fix them if I could only find a way. Sadly, most mistakes in life can't be fixed. That was a particular hard and bitter lesson for me to digest. So you just move on. And you keep on smiling.

But, I do know I will survive this period of gloom, darkness and despair.

This piece I am writing tonight is not meant to dwell on the events that have happened to me, but rather, to focus on what little tiny pieces of wisdom I have held onto like a drowning man holding onto a life raft in a raging sea, what do I really think, looking back over all these many years, made the grade to "self evident truths", and not just hoped for promises I told myself, or lies I believed for venal or selfish reasons, merely stupid platitudes I might say without meaning a thing.

I don't know if I can even begin to list them in a codified way, but I will attempt it, mostly for my  own use in these trying times of my life, and if they help you, amuse you, or illuminate something for you, so much the better.

1. There are really only three kinds of people in this life : MAKERS, BREAKERS, and TAKERS.

I am ashamed to admit which two of these I usually was behaving like in my first 48 years. May I learn to be a maker for more than a little bit of my remaining years of life.

2. Stuff, things, or possessions will NEVER make you happy.

If I had learned this earlier in life, I might not be facing the trials I am today. So be it. I have learned it the hard way, and I have learned it well.

3. Even if hope is all you've got, hope is all you need.

When the chips are down, and it's a long way to a firstdown, much less a touchdown, hope is a pretty damn good thing to have. The very saddest moments of my life were when I have forgotten that, and I let despair of fear blind hope to me.

4. People can fool me so easily it's pathetic, but you can't fool a good dog.

I always should of listened when my dogs told me to shy away from one person or another. Invariably, they were %100 correct, every time. Dogs just seem to know bad folks from good folks.

5. Another person can only break your heart if you have one to break.

I have felt like an utterly tragic and silly old fool in the game of love so many times I have lost count. But, when I hear the stories of other people's relationships from men and women I have known or read about, I realize many, many people never once found that sublime and marvelous  moment of perfect transfiguring love that may exist for only a flash, a second or two it seemed, but it was real to me, it was fine, it was transcendent. I will always be a fool for love. And I hope my heart gets broken a hundred times more, or else I will have lost something magical and unique in my life.

6. Words can hurt worse than brutal blows from a baseball bat.

God, why did I say those awful things? I didn't realize at the time they would hurt those people so much, so hard, and for so long. I must of been cruelly insane. Forgive me, all of you I have hurt. Please let me always be kind in my words. They have so much more power than any of us know.

7. The things I have done never hurt as much as the things I left undone.

So many broken promises, so many unfulfilled dreams, and so many of them are lost, gone and forgotten now. Until I fall asleep, then they all come quietly crawling back, and haunt me. Will they ever set me free? I pray to God they will.

8. The morning sun, shining on a woman's back, as she sleeps quietly next to me, is the most beautiful thing I will ever see in this lifetime.

I remember mornings where I just layed there, and listened to her breathe so softly, watching the sun illuminate her skin, and I was truly in Heaven. May I get to go there again.

9. Life is what you make of it. And up till now, I've just made a mess of it. But only I can change that.

Why didn't I see the clock ticking? Why couldn't I make the right moves, say the right things? Who knows, the first half is over, but I still have the next half to learn from my mistakes, and do the things I will truly be proud of, that actually matter, that make the world just a little bit more...right.

10. If you don't follow your heart, what could ever guide you in this world?

So many lost souls have wandered into and out of my life. But the ones that made it to something real, something fine and outstanding, ALWAYS followed their heart, and nothing more. May I have the courage and tenacity to do exactly the same.

That's it. Thanks for reading this far. I don't know how I will do it, or even what's in store for me, but, I have a game to get back into, this crazy game of life, and I am going to do things quite a bit differently in this, the second half. 

You see, I still have quite some living yet still to do.

Just a dollar, one measly dollar, from each person on the internet is all I want. You don't like boring poor people do you?

That's it. I am so tired of trying to make a big bushel of bucks the hard way. Working is for those that can't find a better way of making money.

I have studied the ways of the rich and famous, and they never take money from the rich, Hell no, they get it from people just like you. The workers, the poor, the ones that invest in America, the regular people.

And here's where you can help me. I have devised a simple, interesting and fun way to get me to the bottom rung of respectability in modern American life.

Send me one dollar, no seriously, just one dollar.That's not as much as George Bush wants for less than one second of his bitchin' wars, less than the latest rock star/rapper wants for you to watch him parade around like a stupid bling bling fool, less than God's self appointed main man Pat Robertson needs for his latest death threat against a political figure from some country he's never even been to.

And this offer is going out to every single one of you. You work hard for you money right? Well, thats why I want it. Thats how people get rich in America these days. They take it from you, so they wont be, well, I'll just say it out loud, poor.

From all of you, anyone of you that realizes I am right, from all over the freakin' pyscho-space of the Internet.

And here's the beautiful part, what will I do for that dollar?

Nothing. Zilch, nada, zip, not squat. NOTHING.

I will be the most fucked up, stupid, and shallow celebrity you have ever seen. I will go to expensive places and do expensive things, for no particular reason, other than that I can.

See, I figured out where I was going wrong all these many years. I was always doing something for my money, working, investing, creating, always giving some back...pffff, that didn't work for shit.

And then it hit me like a ton of golden bricks, what do the celebrities, rock stars. movies stars. sports figures, politicians, preachers, and informercial people do for their money these days?

That's right...Nothing.

I will run for office with absolutely no qualifications other  than I am rich. I will go on talk shows and talk for simply HOURS about shit you could NEVER do, because, you my friend, have to go work every day.

I will run a major important company into the ground by doing nothing but fuck off and play golf. Any CEO worth his multibillion bonuses these days does just that.

And so will I. 

Or I will pretend to be a movie star without ever putting out a single movie. Just like you know, Paris, or well, most of the celebs I see on the boob tube lately. Or even promise you the moon, while doing nothing but selling you out to the highest bidder, just like all your favorite politicians.

I might even tell you that I speak for God, and that he speaks especially to me, and ONLY me, while spending all that money I just know your gonna send me, on fancy ass shiny sharkskin suits, limousines, and the most bodacious baddass house, (make that multiple houses), you have ever seen.

I would do that for you, because I don't want to be a boring person anymore. I want to be that person that makes you want to hang on my every stupid doubletalk speech, every soundbite balanced micro statement, every vapid promise of more for you, while keeping it all for me.

Isn't that how it works in America these days?

I will piss all your money away toot sweet, on all the stupid things the rich and idle piss their/your money away on. But you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you had a hand in making me rich, venal, and vapid. I will be the proudest shining star of the American celebrity lineup. Stupid as the day is long...

And when I bounce in and out of rehabs like a Dallas Cowboys halfback breaking through a shoddy zone defense, I will tell the whole world how much I want be forgiven for acting like a spoiled frat boy with his daddy's credit card at a topless club buffet. In fact, to show you how serious I am, I will go to every strip joint I see, and spend like a crazed madman, just to show how commited I am to making you love watching my stupid pointless antics.

And if, no WHEN, I get caught acting so stupid, and appear to almost have to have suffer some real consequences for my stupid fucked up actions, I will beg everyone to bear with me because I am different than regular folks, because with your help, I will be bulletproof, I will be RICH.

But I can't do a thing in my present condition. For you see, I am poor, I am, well, forgive me, boring.

Wouldn't you really prefer I was rich and stupid, glamorous without having a clue, just like all our favorite stars, media darlings, and rich pricks? I know I would...

That's why I need your help. These rich guys and dolls don't do a damn thing but spend, spend, spend, and I promise I won't either.

This is one promise that I will never break. Send me just one dollar, (well better make it two, because all the rich and interesting people in charge of America have lately devalued the FUCK out of the dollar, so yeah, better make it two), and I will do NOTHING for you, and I will do nothing just as well or better than any damn rich sparkly darling of the bought and paid for media you have ever seen.

Thank you for your help. I can't wait to see me on the T.V.

And if I don't wave at you, don't take it too hard. I will be different than you, I will be a rich asshole that did nothing for his money, and that will give me certain, well, privileges.

Come on, send them two dollars. Make me filthy freakin' rich, it's the American way. Your a good American aren't you?

So send the damn money already.

As my esteemed colleague and noted author, Brian Roper, from our ivy covered and illustrious alma mater file 23 Magazine www.file23.com once said. "Dude, this shit is my escape valve, my release, my therapy!"

How true those words seem when I read the comments on my last piece "Wimmin, I dont waste my time no more on 'em". Frankly, I admit I was a bit harsh. On the ladies. Excuse me, I just had a brain fart.

l truly adore women, and wouldn't know what to do without them in my life.  I was hurting, and I admit it, I was venting. But my feelings are so much more complex, so much closer to reverence and awe than you might think, that I must present the other side, if you will indulge me.

This next piece was written in response to a flood of anti-woman rhetoric on the Dallas Fort Worth Craig's List Rant and Rave section. I present it as exhibit B, for your perusal and pleasure.

"...My my my, there are a lot of bitter people out there. So what, I think life is too short to worry about most things I read about on CL. I recently told my girlfriend she had to move out because we were having some issues we couldn't resolve. Yea, I miss her, the smell of her hair, and her delicious body, but you know what? I still treasure the good times we had. And boy did we have some fun!

She was just the last in a sweet line of beautiful and sexy women I have been fortunate enough to get to know intimately in my long life. I was 47, she was 22. She acted a bit silly at times, but God, she had so much sexuality to share with me. And I loved how she wanted me to take erotic pictures of her. All the time. She blossomed in front of the camera into a beautiful Goddess, just oozing sensuality.

In my younger days, I never would of thought I would of had a chance with a girl like her, but I found out that young girls are just like women all over, they love to be touched and held, needed, lusted after, and then satisfied by a real man.

You fellas that can't find a girl, don't worry, if you have something to offer, they will find you. And if you don't, well, what do you really expect? And if you bitch about that, it's just your loss. Grow a set.

Get a life, and then you will get a women.

I'm not rich, not particularly good looking, not even that smooth a talker. But I am never at a loss for beautiful women. Yes, it's true, I am presently looking for another girl, or women, or lady, that can appreciate all I have to offer. No set list of things I am looking for, she could be young or old, plain jane, drop dead gorgeous, or simply a quiet kind of cute. I will be smitten by one very soon.

Because the hunt is part of the fun. I have run many adds on CL, and I don't get too many responses that meet my expectations. But I will, the next adventurous lady of my life is out there, just waiting to be found. Just be a MAN, that's the thing, and you'll see a big change in your womanly prospects.

As the French say..."Viva la difference".

Life just keeps getting better, and so does the sex!"

You see, I do love woman, every one of you. At times, I am just lonely, please forgive the bellowing of an old bull.