On 2005-10-22 13:55:00, Anonymous wrote:
As to whether or not they deserved it, the people I seen in my first days there did. They were upper crust white bread punks that had gone their whole lives without a serious ass whooping.
Doesn't this say a lot about his feelings about forced incarceration as a teen???"
Not so much, I don't think, as it says about the power of the Program. I suppose how you viewed the whole thing would depend on where you come from; what experience and beliefs you brought with you. I generally believed the idea that most of the snotty kids were something similar to the Program idea of druggiekids. They seemed a lot like the silly, mean, clueless or just spoiled kids I'd gone to school with.
This was not a firmly set idea in my mind. Just one item on the stack of prejudices inherited from home that I hadn't yet really tested. Certainly, at least at first, I thought I was different; that they might belong there, but I certainly didn't. And I'll be a big person about it and admit that I enjoyed a little private vindication from it. These weren't the same individual cheer leaders and bullies who had excluded me from their cliques. But they were the same types.
Since we weren't allowed to get to know each other, all we had to go on was the staff approved version of everything. At least at first. As I did get to know some of these people a little, on the sly, outside of Program protocol, I was... well, damned glad I hadn't been able to open my stupid mouth and say what I was thinking. The law of unitended consequences played out to teach me what a monumental asshole I had been thinking I knew any damned thing at all about 'druggiekids'.
But the Program worked very well on a lot of people. Some are still stuck in the twilight zone even after all these years. Remember Mark what's his name, who went all attack dog after Colleen in defense of Susan Byrd?
Bob, I hope you're not saying you
still think we were all (but thee) in need of a little brainwashing. Or that any transient asshole remark means a full shut out. I, for one, really enjoy your raw narratives. Not that you're the most dazzling writer ever. It's your left-handed take on things and the guileless, experiential way you tell it.
Anyway, I hope you're well.
Why should we take advice on sex from the Pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't.
--George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright
