My own Conservative Journey

How did I come to be a Conservative?

This post is sort of a re-write of an article I originally wrote in February of 2013. To be honest, I hadn't realized till I sat down at my keyboard that it had been six and a half years ago. It sorta felt like yesterday. I've updated the article and made it current; I even corrected a couple mistakes. If you wish to read the original, go here.

But what brought this to fruition? Why did I resurrect a six year old article?

Lately the Net has been full of stories of a mass exodus of people defecting from the Democrat party to ride the Trump Train. There's even a new term, #Blexit, for the massive wave of black voters exiting the party to go Conservative. Just yesterday I heard the term Lexit, applied to Latino voters doing the same thing.

And a couple weeks ago a guy I follow on Twitter tipped me to a guy he was following, a guy in Cincinnati named Scott Ford, who's been causing quite a stir in media circles. A lifelong Democrat, Scott has decided to finally walk away from a party that no longer represents his interests and beliefs, a party of deceit and lies, a party that marginalizes and discriminates while saying it's the Right who does these things. A party of socialism, lunacy, and anti-American values. Reading Scott's posts about how this nation, and his city, are again prospering under the Trump administration and how warmly he's been received by his new legions of followers and friends has been great. He's a super-nice dude, and if you want to follow his Twitter feed, it's ScottFordTVGuy.

So in reading about his journey from Left to Right, it made me think about my own story, and how I probably should have ended up a Liberal but thankfully stayed true to be roots.

Read on below........

 

There are times when I look back at my previous 50 years and marvel at how I became the fervent Small Government, Pro-Constitution, Fiscal Conservative that I am as a middle-aged adult. Sometimes I wonder if it was an evolution, while at other times I'm convinced it was a pre-ordained path I was set upon at birth and that I was always a Conservative at heart. Sometimes I think I became a Conservative because of my upbringing, and sometimes I think it was in spite of it. Regardless, it's been a long, strange trip and while a Conservative I may be, and a staunch one at that (few can truly question my veracity) I don't exactly fit the mold most associate with being the prototypical archetype.

I'm an American citizen, but my people haven't always been. On my mom's side, I'm first-generation. She was born in Canada and emigrated here as a kid. I helped my mother study for her citizenship test in 1993. My grandfather was given his first job in America by a Czech couple who had survived a concentration camp. It's how I picked up a lot of Yiddish words as a kid. On my father's side, I'm second-generation. His father was conceived in Poland and born over here, the last of 12 kids and the  first American in the family. During WW2 he married a girl from Wales and brought her back to the States when the war was over.

I come from a lineage that appreciated being American and following the American dream. I also come from a very, very long line of military people. It's in our blood; it's what we do. On both sides, we're born with a strong sense of duty to serve. My mom's family service goes back to the Crusades. Two of her brothers served in Vietnam without being US citizens. Like I said, it's what we do.

Now, I did say that I became a Conservative in spite of things. By this I mostly mean my education. Public schools have long been the Indoctrination Centers for the Liberal Left. From kindergarten through my first 6 weeks of high school, I was a victim/hostage of the Prince George's County public schools in suburban Maryland, long a deep blue bastion of the Left and currently the focus of a nasty squabble over whether Baltimore is a Third World Shithole. (IT IS) I had some good teachers but the classes were often severely overcrowded. The schools were more like free lunch and daycare for poorer kids than it was a place to get educated. By junior high, circa '82/'83, my classes were 45 kids deep and with a 43 minute class period, so it was less than a minute per kid for the teacher to spend. Good luck if a kid needed some extra help. No wonder some kids fell through the cracks.

I can't recall any overt political indoctrination in my younger years but they really hammered Black History Month on us every year, maybe because I was a bit of a minority (to put it mildly) and in the mid-70's we really weren't that far past the civil rights fights around the time of my birth in 1969. Teachers encouraged us to watch the mini-series "Roots". I could be wrong, but this may have been the beginnings of the Liberal Left wave of White Guilt to make us all feel like evil racists. For certain we never learned about any of the historical black Americans I've written about; instead it was always the Harriet Tubmans and George Washington Carvers and the MLK's. No military figures because the military is evil. Just safe, peaceful academics and freedom fighters against The Man in general and The White Man in particular.

When I hit high school, things took a dramatic turn. I left the DC suburbs and found myself in a small school in coastal Maine an hour north of Liberal Boston. The classes were much smaller; anything more than 20 kids was crowded. The teachers were able to spend more time with the students and I feel my education, such as it was, became much better than what I was getting in Maryland. But, and there's always a but, Maine is full of escaped hippies and tree huggers and transplanted New Yawkas and Masshole Liberals who now outnumber the old-school New England Conservatives easily a hundred-fold. Many Republicans in Maine are Progressive RINO types. (See Susan Collins as a prime example).  My freshman civics teacher moonlighted as a Democrat in the state House of Representatives so my perspective on government may have been sabotaged without my even realizing it. I took history classes from a transplanted NY liberal who disdained the military and let me and my circle of friends (who were fervently pro-military) know it.

Yeah, this was a weird crossroads time for me. Looking back, I was the quintessential confused teenager trying to find myself. I was, as I said, fervently pro-military. I mean, seriously like to the point where I had a subscription to Soldier of Fortune magazine for awhile and I had a litany of tee-shirts that made my teachers cringe. Great shirts like "Kill a Commie For Mommy", and "Kill 'Em All; Let God Sort 'Em Out". Nowadays I'd be thrown out of school as a potential mass shooter based solely on my shirt choices. After watching the original "Red Dawn" at the movies with my posse, I was convinced the Russian hordes were set to invade Maine and the only hope America had was me and mine.

I

My high school guidance counselor (let's call him Phil) acted as if he got some sort of bonus or kickback for every kid who went to college after graduation and was exceedingly butthurt if you didn't say you were going to college. Sat me down my senior year and asked, "So, what are Steve's plans for after graduation?" Officious condescending prick. Did the same to all of us, and my buddy Chris (who was about to enlist in the Marines) said ""I dunno, he's right across the table from you. Why don't you ask him?".

Phil had no use for us once we told him we weren't planning on college and that we were enlisting. Seems he'd been drafted and spent a miserable time in Korea and despised the military and everything to do with it. He only grudgingly and with great resistance allowed military recruiters in to talk to students. He had zero use for me and my friends.

Yeah, I was the strange sort of kid who read The Hunt For Red October as a hardback in '85 at age 16  before most submarine officers did. The kid who went to the library to read Jane's Defense Weekly and would regularly check out Norman Polmar's "Ships and Aircraft of the US Fleet" to memorize entire sections of data on our military. The kid who called CNN once to talk to Norman Friedman about submarines when he was a guest one afternoon and was told by the world's foremost naval analyst that the theory behind my question was a great idea. The kid who would read the annual reports of the Soviet threat and could identify pretty much every tank and aircraft used by NATO and Warsaw Pact forces alike.

Sounds like Reagan's perfect ideal American boy, no?

But at the same time I was a bit conflicted. Like I said, I was finding myself. And in doing so, I found myself drawn to the fringes of the punk music scene and the second British Invasion of New Wave bands. Sometimes it was hard to play the anti-establishment tunes of the Dead Kennedys as they railed against suit-wearing stodgy stuffy Republicans while thumb-tacking a poster of a flight of A-10 tank-busters on my bedroom wall. Most music scenes are decidedly Liberal.Many of my fellow die-hard fans of those 80s bands are still extreme Leftists today. I was reading liberal music rags like Rolling Stone.  I would find myself wearing the combat boots and leather jacket (but not the Mohawk or the safety pin in my ear) and feeling rebellious. I wasn't entirely sure what the hell I was rebelling against, but I was doing it.

Then I joined the Army. It was inevitable, really. And not just as a regular soldier; I was a Military Policeman.

Yours truly in MP School. I still have that boonie hat 31 years later.

I rode a fine line when I was in the Army. Off duty I still listened to the music and dressed in moody black clothes and hung out with Liberal civilians in artsy cafes and clubs, but on duty I was the spit and polish Army cop. I'd get off of patrol duty and high-tail it to the local Alternative Night at a club with my bin of import CDs and 12" remix singles to provide the DJ with fresh tunes. Little did the patrons realize that the dude handing records to the DJ and tearing up the dance floor was The Man.

SIDE NOTE: At least two of the bands that I still listen to from my youth, Depeche Mode and Erasure, covered political themes in their last albums that came out a bit after Trump was elected. Both alluded to being worried that progress made was being lost and that the world was basically headed to hell in a handbasket. I found it funny and somewhat hypocritical that Two of the guys from Depeche Mode live in America instead of home in England and their tour promoting an album that contained the song "Where's the Revolution?" made approximately $200 MILLION but America is oh-so-bad....

I voted in my first Presidential election while stationed in Germany. I voted for Bush 41. Looking back I wish I had been four years older to have voted for Reagan. That would have been a proud moment. C'est la vie.

After the Army I learned what being disgruntled and disenfranchised felt like. It took me 10 months to land a job after the Army, despite being told my status as a veteran gave me preferential hiring status and that my Army skills were invaluable in the civilian workforce. I was beginning to wonder about these stodgy old Republicans in their grey suits and question whether they were actually looking out for my best interests.

Right about this time, the Left really started to use early social media and TV to grab younger voters and lure them in to the fold. The Left used MTV and liberal musicians (Rock the Vote) to appeal to younger, low-information voters who tend to vote based on how young and hip a candidate is. They pushed for states to adopt Motor Voter Bills, where you registered to vote at the DMV when getting a license (as if it was some sort of Herculean effort and miracle to get registered. It ain't that hard, people. It takes effort and desire, though, and that is something most younger Americans lack these days.) While I can look back and applaud the effort to get younger folks interested in politics, registering to vote and actually voting, all they would do is push liberal agendas and liberal candidates. And it worked. Young people came out in droves to vote for Bill Clinton. He was young, he was hip, he played the sax on Arsenio Hall. Bush 41 simply said "Read my lips, no new taxes", and then raised taxes, due in part because Congress was controlled by the Left and that's what Leftists do. But you couldn't tell young people that. Today in 2019, Democrat candidates are promising free shit to everyone, debt and loan forgiveness, amnesty, anything under the sun, to draw in the naive and ignorant young voters.

Slick. Hip. Cool. Serial adulterer.

I didn't vote in the 1992 election, to be honest. I abstained. I was 23, unemployed, I was pissed off, I felt that after giving my first few years of adulthood to Uncle Sam that I needed a break. Looking back, it was stupid and petulant of me in retrospect.

In late 1993 I went back to Maine for college, and regretted it quickly. The University of Maine, like the state it represents, is riddled and rife with hippies, tree huggers, and other various and sundry Liberal ilk. While the Criminal Justice program I was in seemed to have its head screwed on right, the rest of the faculty seemed your average garden variety granola-munching socialists. I got bored with the BS for a BS and dropped out, on the Dean's List with a 3.67 GPA. Read about it here.

Along came the 1996 election, and I simply didn't trust Bill Clinton. I was 27, recently married, and  now had responsibilities, things like bills and payments. And that, my dear readers, is one of the things that grows you up and makes you lean RIGHT and not LEFT: it's easy to bang the liberal drum and rail against those evil banks and corporations when you're a college student leeching off mom and dad, or some welfare maven sucking the governmental teat, all woe is me and downtrodden. But once you grow up and have responsibilities and bills to pay, you begin to realize how shallow and corrupt and vile the Left is and you start hungering for fiscal responsibility in your leaders, a strong national defense to keep offshore scumbags at bay, your right to a firearm to keep local scumbags at bay, lower taxes and fewer regulations so you can keep what you earn and live a free life as guaranteed by the Constitution.

Problem is, the GOP kept propping up stodgy old guys in suits who seemed unrelatable and out of touch.

Yes, I supported Ross the Boss

Bob Dole had all the personality of a dead fish all through the election of 1996. Conversely, Slick Willie was all, well, Slick Willie. He felt your pain, and did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I mean, he was the young hip Prez, why would he lie? I supported the Crazy Guy, Ross Perot, as a protest. I liked the guy.  We got more Slick Willie as a result, and after the election, Bob Dole hit the late night shows (hosted by Liberals) and he was personable, funny, engaging; in other words the exact opposite of what he had shown us during the campaign. If had he shown even half that much personality and affability BEFORE the election I'd have been right there with him all the way.

But yeah, the older I've gotten, the more Conservative I've become. In spite of being surrounded by Libs all trying to seduce me to the Dark Side.

The Liberal Lapdog Media likes to portray the Typical Conservative as either a rich, doddering old man in a suit counting his billions schemed off the backs of the proletarian masses, or as a crazed gun-toting redneck garbed in camo and a NASCAR hat, burning crosses and misquoting Bible verses as they run over illegal aliens and other minorities in a giant pickup. The media only fans those flames higher now under Trump.

 Conservative Stereotype A

Conservative Stereotype B

Yes, there are rich Conservatives in bespoke suits and yes there are Conservatives who live just down the road from me who fit more than just a couple of the criteria on the latter list.

Where do I fit in? What convenient little box can the Left try to put me in? Am I the rich guy playing golf and getting his lawn manicured by struggling brown people? Or am I the Bud Light-swilling racist misogynist looking for gays to beat up and drag behind my F-350?

Neither. I'm a pretty normal, average Joe.

I'm a blue-collar guy. I work for the Department of the Navy in logistics. (I shan't divulge further). I'm not rich by any means. I'm a college dropout. A damned intelligent college dropout if I dare say.

I'm not a religious guy whatsoever. On a generous day, I'm an agnostic at best. However, I have no real problem with those who practice their faith. This nation was founded on religious freedom as one of its basic tenets. I simply choose not to practice.

Pickup truck with a gun rack?  Land Rover Evoque? Not me; I drive a screamin' green Hyundai Kona and the wife drives a Nissan.

I have 11 tattoos and  had 2 earrings till I finally outgrew the notion. Didn't get my first tat till I was 36. Instead of golf, I play Pokemon Go on my phone.

Yes, I have tattoos for a band. A Liberal band, even.

And I have my belief system as a tattoo

Gun nut? I like guns, am very comfortable with guns, and I enjoy shooting. Do I own a closet full of shotguns and sniper rifles? Nope.We have a couple of handguns for personal defense and yes, an AR-15 for recreational target shooting. Would I shoot an intruder threatening my home and family? You bet your ass, and with zero hesitation. Think you're gonna come take my guns, Donkey Party? Good luck. I may lose in the end but they'll find me in a pile of expended brass surrounded by those who failed in their task before me.

Most conservatives are against same-sex marriage. Not me. I'm cool with it. You're different from me in your sexuality? Fine. You found love? Awesome. You wanna commit and get married and take a penalty on your taxes like me? Excellent. You want to be able to extend familial survivor benefits and what not to your spouse? Cool. That in no way affects or threatens my marriage or me in any way. Some people are gay and we as a human race really need to get the fuck over it.

As a side project, I am a licensed wedding officiant. In that capacity, I have performed several same-sex marriages.

For the most part I am fervently anti-drug. Hell, I used to put people in military prisons over drugs. I've mellowed out a bit somewhat about legalizing marijuana though. Many Conservatives are even against medical marijuana and CBD oil. Not me; bring it on if it helps. But don't expect me to condone Starbucks offering clean places for junkies to shoot up and drop off needles.

Death penalty? DO IT.

Conservatives, by and large, wave a big huge giant flag against abortion. It's a super-tricky issue. I'm not in favor of it as a rule, especially not as a form of contraception by irresponsible types and not if we gotta fund it for free for those same irresponsible types. It's your problem; why should I pay for it? The complication is that it is constitutionally legal. If you ban it, it will just go underground and occur in secret filthy labs set up in self-storage lockers and folks are gonna die. (And by folks I don't just mean the fetus; I also mean that those getting it done will invariably become casualties as they would in any lurid, secret, underground, illegal, unlicensed surgical deal). If you really feel the need to ban it, amend the Constitution that you claim to defend, uphold, and support. That's the process we set up when we founded this country. Personally, I'm against it after the first few weeks whatsoever, unless continuing the pregnancy will cause harm and irreparable damage. Some say that life begins at conception and others say at birth. Some say that if you're going to say that a pre-fetal zygote is a living human why can't you claim it on your taxes and give it a Social Security Number till it's born?  For the record, I have no children of my own, so some would also say that I shouldn't even comment on the subject at all. But since when do I follow the rules?

The more I get to know my fellow Conservatives (not Establishment Republicans) the more I think I'm probably actually more mainstream than I thought. We tend quite often  to fall into that gray area middle ground. We work, and we work hard. We want lower taxes and we want government to stay the hell out of every bit of minutiae in running our lives. We're sick of welfare leeches and sick of paying through the nose for gas and food. We're sick of illegals pouring through our borders and getting free shit. We're sick of our rights being eroded away and being replaced by bullshit regulations. We're sick of the Left usurping the Constitution. We're sick of being labeled as racists, Nazis, and fascists by people who ACTUALLY ARE THOSE THINGS. We're sick of the Establishment GOP handing us RINO squishes and jellybacks as candidates, of giving us progresssive old rich white dudes as candidates, of giving us UNELECTABLE candidates who won't fight back or even fight at all. We're sick of bending over and taking it in the ass from the Left on every issue because our alleged leadership just caves in on every issue. This is how Donald J. Trump got elected.

Okay, rant over.What say you?

The Man Comes Around

If you've been a long-time reader of this blog you'll recall that during the election cycle of 2016,  I was not a big fan of one Donald J. Trump. I was pretty critical of him; hell, I was downright brutal on many occasions. At the time, I simply felt that he was not the right choice to lead the Right, let alone lead the Nation as a whole.

In all honesty, and in the name of transparency, I did not vote for President Trump. I voted instead for Gary Johnson. Why? Like I said, at the time I felt that Trump was the wrong choice and I wanted to try and garner enough support for a third party candidate to get the Libertarians into the debates and be viable. We see how well that worked out for me. Such is life.

Here we are now, two and a half years into the Trump Presidency and I gotta say, I have changed my tune quite a bit. So long as we can keep DJT focused on doing President Stuff and off of Twitter, life is a hell of a lot better than it was in the Reign of Lord Obama.

The economy is strong. The Dow Jones has never been higher at any point in history. Same with the NASDAQ and the S&P 500. For reals, all three closed today at record highs. Jobs are plentiful, unlike during The Reign. Unemployment is way down, in fact it is currently only 3.7%. Gas prices are down. Folks are optimistic.

Not only is North Korea pretty much in check, Trump became the first President with the stones to go there and engage in diplomacy. Sure, Kim Dong Fruit occasionally test-fires his little rockets and sends the Blamestream Media into a hissy fit, but there's a strategy to this, me thinks. RocketMan gets to play with his toys and look like the Big Man on The Peninsula to his poor wretched subjects, and those folks don't know any better when he says they are able to reach DC ten times over when in fact they can barely reach Seoul if the wind is right. So, The Pudgy Dictator looks all badass and saves face but knows full well if he steps outta line he's gonna get his peepee whacked.

We have open dialogue with China. After all the Obama Apology Tours, they've been hit with tariffs but there's not been this scary trade war the media pundits prophesied. Yes, they hit us with tariffs on our goods but it hasn't gotten nasty. Both sides are still talking and working to ease trade tensions.

Despite the best efforts of the vile swine on the Left, improvements are being made to secure our southern borders. Predictably, the Left has been triggered and crying in their soy milk as expected. But hey, don't sneak in illegally like an invasion force. I've covered this issue for a decade-plus now.

Over all, there is a buoyant spirit of patriotism and American pride that I frankly hadn't seen since the Reagan Years, other than the brief periods surrounding Desert Storm and 9/11. It's really a nice change after The Reign to have a President that truly loves this country.

Look, I'm not saying President Trump is the Second Coming of Jesus. I still often cringe at shit he says or tweets. I'm not a complete T-Zombie worshiping at the altar of The Donald, like many folks I know on Twitter and Parler. But I can say that I'm quite comfortable with Making America Great Again, and Keeping America Great. As they say, where we go one, we go all. And as for the 2020 elections, I can safely say I'll be voting for Donald J. Trump this time.

The Return of the Boogeyman

 This country needs defending from the scumbags on the Left. That's a known fact. They don't respond well to things like facts or reason. They don't respond well to returning fire for fire received, and for taking the fight back to them tenfold. They tend to wilt and fold, and melt like snowflakes in a blast furnace. But who will be the boogeyman that haunts their dreams?




Okay...that was a bit melodramatic.

In addition to requesting feedback here on the blog, I also asked my Twitter Tweeps if I should start writing again. I didn't ask anyone on Parler, because as far as I know, none of them ever knew about this blog.

It's been really great hearing from long-time readers and friends encouraging me to get back in the saddle again. I'm not sure how often I will be writing and posting, but it appears that I shall resume my ranting from the rooftops once more.

So, I guess I better get off my ass and start typing. Being the Left's boogeyman begins anew!

Time for a Knife Hand

Okay...yeah, I know...

I let this blog go for over nine months. In truth, I was going to just shut it down. Lack of time and lack of inspiration hit me hard. However, the past week or two have given me fuel to burn on. There's gonna be some changes, some that might surprise a few of you, but really, the basic format will stay the same.

If you leftists think I'm done calling you out on your bullshit, think again. However, I'm watching both sides of the political spectrum. If our new Commander In Chief screws the pooch, I'll be all over it the same way I called out Lord Obeezy and his minions. But mostly, I have the feeling I'll still be calling you Leftists out on your hypocrisy, your lies, and your socialist idiocy.

So, yeah, new shit is coming soon. And probably a newer layout.

Lightning Six Actual, out.

New stuff over at my other site

Dapper and Savvy is a dangerous combination

As you may recall, I don't just write this one blog site. In addition to maintaining a busy schedule with my day job, I'm also the author of The Savvy Guyde, a tongue-in-cheek advice blog for guys from the vantage point of the jaded older guy acting as ta Virtual Wingman. I do it as a relief from writing about politics and associated worldwide insanity and mayhem.

Recently I've expanded my scope, and started some new article series in addition to my existing series on the best in new music and highlighting the newest men's products. I have a series called Know Your Poisons where I highlight various liquors and educate the reader on how it is made and what makes it special, and offer up some cocktail recipes featuring same. And the Starvin' Like Marvin series gives some simple yet delicious recipes for easy meals geared towards the kitchen novice.

I encourage you all to go give it a look-see and peruse my archives. Join us, subscribe, ask me some questions.....I think you'll dig it.

A tribute to one of my inluences

“I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.” -HST

I’ve said before that one of my influences as a writer was “gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson. As a freshman in high school I had a subscription to none other than National Lampoon Magazine and I became a huge fan of satire and parody, and I admittedly do a lot of both in a very deadpan serious delivery. One of the articles in The NLM that always stuck in my craw was an essay/short story that was so absurd and over the top that 30+ years later I went looking for it yet again on the web trying to secure a copy of it. I had always assumed the author was Thompson, based on the title alone; “Fear and Loathing on the Kindergarten Trail”, a play off on his books "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and  “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail”. 

For years and years, I searched the web all over far and wide for any sort of reference to this work. Turns out I was somewhat up my own ass about things as I have FINALLY found the essay in question.

Turns out I had the title wrong for 30 years. And it was a parody, as stated before, and not actually one of Hunter’s works. So much for the iron-trap memory I had at 14. I finally found it on a site that archived a lot of the late 70’s and early 80’s issues of The National Lampoon, and they were saved in a bad quasi-Notepad-meets-ASCII format that I had to clean up and edit to make readable. 

So, without further ado, I bring you that essay that started me down the road to being a twisted writer….

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exclusive! An excerpt from a new work by the author of The Curse of the Yoyo.

Fear and Loathing on the Nursery School Trail 

I WAS JANGLED OUT OF MY SLEEP by the sound of the telephone ringing. I tried to ignore it.  A long, hot summer of continuous horror-film watching and high-speed sugar ingestion had left me physically racked and vulnerable to the slightest attack. The mere mention of responsibility or summer's end gave rise to uncontrollable spasms and a baroque brain paralysis that turned me into a scratching, weeping specimen that even a leper would pity. 

The phone persisted. I grabbed for it blindly, upsetting my night light and causing the eerie white beam to fall into my younger brother's lower bunk. It came to rest next to his head, illuminating his skull like a strange jack-o'-lantern. I finally located the telephone receiver and held it to my ear. My attorney was on the other end, yelling loudly. 

"Hunter, is that you? Jesus, don't you know what time it is?" 

"Time?" I tried to talk, but a spiral of yellow phlegm clung to my windpipe like a leech. 

"It's seven in the morning, for Crissakes. We've got less than an hour before school…” 

"School!" 

Mother of Babbling God. I had forgotten completely about school. My head cleared like a high-voltage jolt coursing through my rubber wee-wee sheets. It was 7:00 AM Monday morning, the first day of school, and I didn’t even have a loose-leaf organizer. My attorney was still talking, rattling on at a frantic pace. 

"Meet me in front of Hymie's Candy and Cigarettes in fifteen minutes. We still have time to organize an effective game plan.”

I told him I’d be there and hung up. I slowly slipped off the upper bunk, taking pains not to step into Davison's open mouth, and switched on the lights. It looked like rabid wolverines had stampeded through our room while we slept. Chairs and tables were overturned, and the television, still blaring from the night before, had a viscous brown streak of hardened liquid streaked across the screen, giving Mush Mouse and Pumpkin Puss the distorted appearance of a hydra-headed wildebeest. 

I loped across the garbage-strewn carpet, avoiding jagged objects, picked up Burl Ives's "Blue Tail Fly," and plunked it down on my trusty "Groove Tunes" plastic record player. I cranked it up to maximum volume, fixed myself a beaker of cold Nestle Quik, and slumped into an oversize beanbag chair. This was a little ritual designed to soothe my nerves and send my next-door neighbor into a lathering, wall-punching fit. The man was a despicable Nazi lowlife who deserved to have his upper and lower epidermis scraped off with three-grit sandpaper, for reasons I won't get into here. 

I dressed and ate a fast breakfast consisting of orange juice, grapefruit juice, and six different varieties of pre-sweetened cereal. At 7:30 I bade my sleeping younger brother farewell and climbed onto the Big Wheel, a big dangerous bike with an unsettling tendency to spin out without the slightest warning or provocation. 

After several close calls, one of which sent me fishtailing into the back end of a matronly crossing guard, I got the beast under control and arrived at Hymie's in one piece. My attorney was waiting outside. He greeted me heartily, a large paper sack clutched under his right arm. 

"Jesus” I said, "What have you got in there? Hymie's inventory?”  He laughed and dumped the contents of  the bag into the Big Wheel.

"Just a few necessary supplies," he said, spreading out the pile for closer examination. 

Cazart! If any of you parents ever learn anything it should be this: under absolutely no circumstances should you ever subsidize a fat, crazed, self-indulgent five-year-old attorney with a connoisseur's appreciation for fine candy. 

The stockpile broke down as follows: Two one-pound bags of M&M's, plain and peanut. Six packs of Twizzlers. Six packs of Necco's. Three dozen peanut -butter cups. A month's supply of Oh Henrys. Two cartons of Three Musketeers and Snickers. A carton of Kit Kais. A case of Pepsi. A rainbow assortment of bubble gums, lollipops, and penny candies. A blotter sheet of button drops. Enough licorice shoelace to strangle a boar hog. A twelve-ounce bar of Cadbury Fruit & Nuts and a small vial of pure cooking vanilla. 

"This is a week's worth of candy," I pointed out. "We’ll never make it by the front door with this stuff." 

My attorney nodded his head solemnly and looked at me through vaguely dilated pupils. I suspected he'd already dipped into the M&Ms. 

"As your attorney I think it s in our best interests to consume as much of this candy as possible. It would be a shame to throw even half of it away," 

"You're insane," I reasoned. "This much candy would reduce both of us to a pair of babbling, dangerously over-loaded freaks," 

My attorney grinned at me knowingly. 

"We'll fit in perfectly. Remember, this is the first day of school." 

He climbed onto the Big Wheel and wasted no time ripping open wrappers; the Snickers went first, three apiece, washed down with a bolt of Pepsi. Then the rest of the M&M's and the Oh Henry's. 

"Those Snickers are pure glucose.” my attorney warned. "You’ll feel the first rush any minute now." He was right. As we picked up speed and rumbled down Main Street a fine light wave trickled up my spine and came to rest at the base of my head. 

"Hand me that licorice, you greedy whore," I said to my attorney. "That's supposed to be enough for both of us." 

He shrugged and dropped a half-eaten clump into my lap. We ate an entire carton of Kit Kats in the next three blocks, and by the time we reached the halfway point in our journey we were both hopelessly twisted. 

"They’ll probably hang us both from the flagpole as an example to all the other students." I said, peeling back the plastic wrapper from a Charms Blow Pop. 

"Yes," my attorney agreed, chuckling like Mussolini. Suddenly his smile disappeared and his eyes filled with terror. 

"Watch out for Papa Smurf!!!” he screamed, grabbing at the controls. "My God. Look at that! I wonder where the rest of the gang is?" 

I couldn't see Papa Smurf, but the sky was full of black-fanged pterodactyls and I was having trouble pedaling. 

My attorney howled and lashed out at the handlebars, nearly capsizing us. 

"Get a grip on yourself' I screamed. “I thought you could handle the candy." He slumped back in his seat and ate a fistful of Necco's. 

"Of course, of course. I've been acting crazily. It’s those Three Musketeers. They're horribly unpredictable.”

I stopped at a red light, and a pair of first-graders on a red Schwinn pulled up beside us. They had their brand-new clothes on and looked as eager as mongrels looking for potential masters at a dog pound. My attorney leaned over the side of the Big Wheel and stared at them. 

"You want some fucking candy?" he screamed, spitting and drooling chocolaty goo from his mouth. "Hubba Bubba. Snickers. Pure granulated sugar, man. Blow your fucking head off!" 

I glanced over at the Schwinn and saw the pair was frozen with shock. 

The bike they were riding had a wicker basket on it and my attorney was tugging at it, trying to get their attention. 

"Can't you hear me, you crazy bastards? Are you deaf? I'm talking about two-two-two mints in one. A fistful of peanuts in every bar!!!”

I tried to maneuver the Big Wheel past them but I was up against the curb and couldn't turn without knocking into them. 

"M&M's. Hershey's chocolate motherfucker. Melt in your fucking brain, not in your mouth!" 

The light finally changed and the Schwinn took off like a turbo jet. My attorney burst out laughing.

"Jesus, what fucking zombies. They're exactly the type of pigs infiltrating the school system. Christ, did you see the decals on their knapsacks?" 

I could see he was getting worse by the minute. While he talked he scratched incessantly at an invisible rash and rocked to and fro spasmodically. Suddenly he started rummaging through a pile of wax wrappers, frantically searching for something. 

"Where's my balloon?" he shouted. "Where did I put my balloon?" 

Jesus, I thought, he's falling apart. Any second now he'll turn violent and they'll find us both on the side of the road, holding each other's spleens in our hands, our foreheads ripped open and dripping blood in the sun. He rose out of the pile and smiled broadly. Clenched in his fist was a red balloon.

"I couldn't function without this," he said. "If the situation gets tense you just load this baby up with water and drench every man, woman, and child within a twelve-foot radius. Never fails to jolt the bastards straight down to their socks.”

We arrived two hours late and parked the Big Wheel on the front steps. It was a terrible scene, both of us falling over each other as we tried to pry the school doors open. "These things have no fucking handles," my attorney screamed, clawing at the steel doors stupidly. "They built a school without any handles," 

"It's clearly an act of aggression." I said, my entire body now soaked in a trembling spastic sweat. "They want us to use the back entrance like common house servants.' 

A small boy with fear in his eyes parted the doors from inside and pushed on past us; either he'd been thrown out or he'd seen all he wanted to. 

"Jesus," my attorney said. "Did you see the look on that kid's face? I wonder what they did to him in there?" 

I stared at him and smiled weakly, "They probably dragged him into the bathroom and beat him around the kidneys with pointers and yardsticks.” 

"Jesus," my attorney muttered.

I shrugged and headed into the school lobby. Violence was commonplace the first day of school, I'd seen unacclimated teachers go completely berserk and start swinging in a crowded classroom, knocking children senseless by the barrelful. 

 

"Hell," I continued, "I remember last year, on the first day, my homeroom teacher grabbed a talkative child in the first row and erased the entire goddamn blackboard with his head. His head! The kid inhaled so much chalk dust that he went instantly blind and fell into an irreversible coma.” I could see my attorney was starting to look a little uneasy. I laughed and swatted him on the back. 

"Don't worry," I reassured him. "They only hurt you if you look like a troublemaker." 

"Well fuck that," he said. "I'm a model student no matter what these evil scum-suckers say." 

The corridors looked like the verge of a bad riot scene; rat-faced faculty members herded 

shell-shocked brats up and down the hallways like meal hogs while the PA system periodically blurted garbled instructions to "kindly proceed to your designated home-room." 

My attorney glanced down at a crumpled schedule. 

"What room are you boys supposed to be in?" I whirled around and came face to face with an ugly fat man. 

“Ah.. .of course, what room?" I said, thinking frantically. "What room indeed? Room 200. Yes. Probably room 200, of course, I remember distinctly now. Or was it room 244? We're new here, you know. Just trying to blend in and enjoy the scenery. The last thing we'd want is any trouble. Are you a member of the line staff?" 

I assaulted him with some more gibberish but he wasn't buying it. 

"Could I see your schedule, young man?" 

I dug through my pockets, but all I could come up with was a pile of candy wrappers. "I must have left it in my other coat," I said, walking fast in the other direction. I hadn't gotten three steps when I felt his hard grip on my shoulder. 

"I think you better come with me to the principal's office.' 

Suddenly my attorney was in the middle of it, snarling at the fat man. 

"Get your hands off my client, you worthless pig-fucker; How would you like to be brought up in front of the board for physically manhandling a student? You could lose your job for that." 

The fat guy wasn't biting. He paraded us down the hall in a primitive version of a Nazi death march.

Christ, I thought. They'll find the cooking vanilla in our knapsacks. The man will tell the principal we're both vicious impostors and that we threatened him with his life. No! Our only hope was to run.

We made a break for it, but the sugar comedown clouded our brains and it seemed as if we were moving in slow motion. The principal's goon squad nailed us ten feet from the door. Caught like doomed rats. 

Editor's Note: Dr Thompson's notes became very jumbled at this point. The following is a transcript from an interview Dr. Thompson had with his attorney and Rick Bloom, Dr. Thompson's campaign manager during his failed bid for election to the school council earlier that year: 

HST: You worthless pig. I didn't think you'd have the guts to show your face after you bungled my campaign. 

ATT: Hey. Rick, do you have any chocolate milk? 

RB: Jesus. Hunter, you sabotaged that campaign yourself when you scrawled Report Cards Are Weird" on the side of the principal's Volkswagen. 

HST: The man was a vicious misanthrope. And besides, the polls showed I was trailing by nearly three hundred votes. I had to do something drastic. I would have gotten away with it, too, if you hadn't panicked and dropped the Magic Markers.

RB: My heart wasn't in it. I kept thinking people were watching from behind the handball courts. 

HST: Balls. 

ATT: Cooking vanilla?