Dear Alinwa, So you were expelled for "abnormal behavior". In the benchrest crowd that is the norm rather than the exception. Did you jump into the lion's cage at the zoo and taunt a male lion like a woman recently did? Heck, even the lion didn't go near her she was so abnormal. Did you go around with a noose around your neck at 2 am like Jussie Smollett? Talk about abnormal have you seen the behavior of the House of Represenatives lately? I don't know what you did to be expelled but compared to that bunch you were probably a rank amateur in the theater of the abnormal. I could go on but I have to go walk my therapy possum. Tim
Oooohhh Dr Tim, you see I was born a poor white chile.... a poor, fundamentalist Christian white child, sheltered and protected from life's slings and arrows. We didn't have TV (sin) nor didn't drink (sin) nor swear (sin) nor chew nor spit nor touch ourself there nor even have bad thoughts.... just ha'ppy ha'ppy happ'ly all the day hippity-hop.
I guess I could call myself a Naive American.
As such, I lissened to my Guidance Councellor and when she said "pick a job doing what you love"..... I reacted "GUNS!" and I went straight from high school to gunsmithing school. A newly formed gunsmithing school. Brand new course, new teachers, new curriculum, first year of the first year, growing pains and all (the class', not mine)
I got to learn about frictions, and people and politics...... yeahh, lots of politics. I won't tell tales out of school except on myself but suffice it to say, I got a crash course in friction. I'm the kid who grew up maxing my limit at the Bookmobile every week.... I thrived on early Heinlein, 'Tom Swift' and EE Doc Smith, idealistic, driven, precocious.....Truth, Justice and the American Way...... and that Charter Class was as PC as they come so we were a mixture indeed. 1/3 vets, and a "cross-section of the commun'ty" ages from 19 to 67 with the buh'ligatory complementary female contingent.
Friction, friction in high places.
The inside story of how the course came into existence is fascinating in it's own right, but suffice it to say that bringing guns, LOTS of guns into a college even back in the 80's required some communal give and take.
AND.... this was before I really learned just how much normal folks hate the smart kids.
Or... to be more specific, the nice kids.....
So I'm just ping-ponging my way blithely along, not a care in the world, doin' my thing......sure sometimes folks were mean or said nasty things but "hey, I prob'ly deserved it" especially if it was a teacher or administrator. My only FRIENDS were those vets. Cuz I KNEW them, I could trust them. I learned as much from them as I did from the course. In fact, in the end, what I learned from them made it worth the student loans. So my first trouble was getting pulled from class by 3 cops, jingling cuffs. Acros't the entire classroom, through the lunchroom, through the commons, through the entire school and out..... not a WORD, just Miranda's and "come with us"
???
I was "going to jail for robbing the machine shop (or auto shop?) teacher at gunpoint"
!!!
Or at least be expelled....
Note that while I'm only a teenager, and a naive one..... I'm not dumb, nor easy, nor guilty!
Of A N Y T H I N G, E V E R ....
And they're jamming me into a corner, a corner I din't even know was THERE!
I did this;
And said "I dunno what's going on but you'se picked the WRONG taildragger to use for your scapegoat boys cuz I ain't done NUTTIN'!"
Which was simple truth.
Next day I'm back in school and of course everyone's wondering.
The Story Is Out, involving money and wimmen and skullduggery in high places culminating in armed robbery, but I'm "in the clear, for now" and I'm instructed to "keep it on the down-low" by the ghosts and higher-ups..... and the vets gave me a new nickname.....and the shop teacher is GONE.... along with another staff member and an administrator... and it WAS a setup. I was the supposed patsy in a cover-up for a large sum of missing petty cash.
ooops
And the frictive forces kinda' ramped up. But I'm just so full of win that I don't notice.... and then I really did miss-step.
Off the rear of our classroom we had a "firearm function-testing room" which consisted of a CMU room with a large pipe poured into the floor at a downward angle into which we routinely fired guns. AND.... in addition to guns, I was always fascinated with pyrotechnics. I was buying saltpetre and sulphur at the drugstore when I was about 11 and the druggist gave me a liddle eyebrow and a lecture, but sold me the stuff when I asked him mildly "should I go get a note from my Mom?"
I had a great childhood. My fascination with 'bang' was encouraged as healthy....
Consequently I ALWAYS had a supply of firecrackers.
And you gotta' remember the 80's and Waco and Ruby Ridge and the BATFE and setups and stings and "full-auto and silencers are jail for life".... you could even get fined or jailed for possession of firecrackers in some states.
So I, ME, and ONLY ME decided it would be funny to drop a string of BlackCats down the shooting tube just to see the reaction.
So I did.
But since't I was OUTSIDE THE ROOM and back at my desk.... the door wasn't locked.
And the other young kid in class figgered it would be even FUNNIER with the door opened.
And the fuse hung up on the rubber flaps at the mouth of the tube. So the entire string went off at the top of the tube, not down deep in the ground......
And certain folks who felt threatened leapt on an opportunity. Certain SCHOOL folks....administrators and teachers, not classmates. And I learned what the vets were telling me about "you gotta' stop trusting adults!"
I was to be disgracefully and everlastingly EXPELLED from The Shrine....forever and ever
It took about a week of political pondering and pandering but in the end I made my case well enough to stay... and graduate with honors.... but a ghost took me aside and said "the right thing".
He told me "you're right, you're being railroaded, you've won, but I think you need to know that there will be a sacrificial lamb, it's you or XXX"
Well, I had my whole life ahead of me and XXX didn't.
So I bowed out, went to work the next day as a gunsmith in a shop.
And when graduation came around I was offered an "Honorary Degree" at which I scoffed...... I made them offer an absolutely no-strings-attached full on DEGREE with full honors.
And then turned them down.
Antisocial?
Yes
Honor intact?
Yes
Abnormal?
Proudly
I had a whole possum bit worked up, with "well you CAN I guess stick your finger in . . . ." etc etc but Big Al kinda' trumped me on that one so Good On Ya's Big Al The Nyhus..... laffed me guts out
