Well this year looks like it is going to be a banner year for the Conference. I ran into a girl that used to live in my apartment building and I got to talking about my involvment in the movement and in these forums and it turned out that she brought forth a whole different perspective into this mess that I had never once thought about. As a young girl, she had gone through three different High Schools due to remarriage in her family. She had quite a few friends that entered Straight only to come out as mindless Zombies that she could no longer relate to. At the worst, she was just what was known in the program as a "Bop" and here she ended up an outcast by people she had grown up with and it really hurt her as a young impressionable teen to be subjected to the durision of the program. She witnessed first-hand the crap that we all had to endure and it really affected her as well, and she never even had to undergo what we went through ourselves, yet it scarred her upbringing just as hard as ours did. I am going to try and get her involved with the Conference, and she wants to herself, just to see if she may be able to finally reunite with old friends. The tentacles of Straight were alot more far reaching than most of us think of after all............ If anyone else can relate to this venue, please feel free, because I would love to hear about them. take care, Bob in St.Pete
[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2003-05-17 22:41 ]