I left my program well before the awful eighties. I was fortunate
enough to have 7 stepped before school started in my Senior year at
Dixie Hollins High so I entered 12th grade a free man. My printing
class took up the last 2 periods of the day, and my part time job was
in a print shop near my house Wed, Thur, and Fridays. The first
thing I bought with my savings from the job was the nicest damn 10
speed bike money could buy. It was sweet, leather seat and handlebar
wraps, cantelever brakes, custom fenders, heavy duty rack, and heavy
duty extra wide gumwall tires. I no longer stayed around the house
putting up with my idiot brothers. I went everywhere on that damn
thing and wore out the rear axle twice. I would even ride it all the
way to St. Pete Beach and back. I had the bike from Nov '79 til it
was stolen in Oct '81.
I remember hanging out with the other 7 steppers and stuff and most
of them had crappy low paying jobs at the mall, but there was another
group of guys who were a part of the "old boy network" like the
clowns that worked at Economy TV or the poor saps that worked on the
Aylesworth and Atkins fishing fleets, but I just looked at that shit
as indentured servitude. I was gonna be my own man and was
determined to not have Straight breathing down my neck any longer.
None of the people that I knew that sucked up to the Straight Parents
for jobs and shit ever amounted to anything anyway. I got my first
car when I was enrolled in Vo Tech, and had to leave the class early
and take job offers from the guidance counselor to earn credits,
because my dad started hammering me for payments. I managed to work
my way into the GTE Directories Corporation and became a company
slave at the tender age of 18. I was the youngest Press Trainee in
the history of the company and within 6 months I was running the roll
stands if someone called in sick. I was making more damn money than
my wicked stepmother and loving every minute of it, but little by
little the demands of the job started to erode away what was left of
my teen years. Within a year I was a stressed out zombie, suffering
from chronic depression and sleep deprivation from constantly being
jerked around from one shift to another. I was fired for poor
performance in Feb of 1982 and in April 60% of the plant was laid off.
Reaganomics had finally reached the Sunshine State. Things got real
bad real fast then. Had a nervous breakdown, kicked out of the
house, lived in my car while working part time at McFuckinDonalds,
enlisted in the Army, did okay for a while, but got drummed out for
a "personality disorder" anyways, then finally settled down with a
good job and a motorcycle. Relapsed the fall of '84, learned the
joys of homeless living Martha Stewart style, lived like a vampire on
acid until I snapped out of it in the Spring of '86. By then I had a
nice Firebird with mags and everything was cool. From outta nowhere,
I crashed and burned headlong into a total manic surge in the fall
of '88 and had to get treatment. They just pumped me full of Haldol
and Lithium, loaded me into the launch tube, and shot me out the door
10 days later, and I returned to work drooling like Bruce Willis in
12 Monkeys. Since then I have had some good jobs as well as bad, but
the important thing is that when I finally threw in the towel last
Summer, I had sufficient earnings to qualify for early retirement
with a nice comfy check from SSDI. I don't owe anybody anything and
if anyone from the DFAF campfire wants to try telling me I deserved
everything that happened to me because of my "druggy past," then I
am just gonna have to give them a complimentary Dental Exam while I
help them pick their teeth up off the pavement in Orlando.
(this was originally posted over at Straight Alumni under a different title)
