Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

Wow!  We both wore the same pair of shoes!  I started paying rent of $25 a week in '81.
I stopped doing chores as well, then resumed only so the step mom would shut the hell up.
My dad put in for a home improvement loan and we said goodbye to newcomers, since me and the older brother were on 5th phase anyway.  We had a brand new kitchen with all the latest appliances.  Even had a special faucet that shot out near boiling hot water for instant coffee and stuff.  The dishwasher became the most truly wonderful toy my father ever bought me.  At least once a week, I would find new ways to make another
"mistake"  adding to the wholesale destruction of dinnerware.  I think my most brilliant move was jamming the the open handle of some hotdog tongs over the top sprayer jet thingy, where it spun around at high speed smashing every damn glass it touched!!!!!  Wow, this feels so good to be typing this!  Thank you for letting me know that I was not alone in this sort of situation.  I think the blind obediance the program instilled in us allowed these sick family relationships to fester for so long.
Now the only question remaining is, was I the only Straightling guilty of the mass-destruction of countless household appliances
in an effort to vent the rage of having been robbed of normal adolescense?  -Bob in St. Pete

Hey Kosmonaut, just read your post today.  I did basic starting Jan 10, 1983.  The M1-Abrams was still brand new so we got to train in old M60-A3 upgraded Viet Nam tanks.
It was pretty cool, because we were allowed to beat the shit out of them and chase after deer and run over small trees and stuff.  I was pulled from my gate 3 test just 6 days short of Graduation on a forced section 8 under the Trainee Discharge Program.  They said I had a "Personality Disorder" when in fact, I was an active Manic/Depressive.  Under normal circumstances, I would have been treated by mental hygeine and reassigned
but we had a President who told starving inner city school children that ketchup was a vegetable, so what could you expect?  I would have gone to Germany also, but the whole situation was out of my hands.

During the first few months in the Morgan Yacht building after the start of school in the fall of '78 you used to team up after lunch with a dude that looked the a dark haired version of Robin Zander (lead singer of CHEAP TRICK) I finally remember his name.
Chris Burns, it was and you two were unbeatable at getting performance out of us.
Chris had hair like a rock star, and the girls would gush when he came into group.  You had us kids eating out of the palm of your hand.  While Liz & Chris Cassler had cornered the market on Love Raps, you and Chris were tag team champs at getting us to uncover hidden weaknesses.  I remember this one rap where you gave us 1st phasers a chance to stand up a higher phaser and describe them in just one word.  You called on me and I stood up a guy that had only related 3 or 4 times in big group since I had been there.  He was a 4th phaser named Dan Tishner.  The word I used to describe him was 'illusion.'  I was'nt trying to impress anybody, but our eyes locked briefly and it was like you were staring into a crystal ball or something.  It scared the shit out of me.  He got put on a refresher that day, and split the program the next morning, the minute the car door opened in front of the Yacht building.  His short lived oldcomer even kept the beltloop as a souvenir!  That event always freaked me out and I made it a point to never let it look like I was a staffer's pet ever again.  Just because I had a little more insight from being a jerk and simply observing, did'nt mean a kid deserved to be taken away from home and treated like shit like that.

Shortly before going into the Army, I decided I would drink mostly for social reasons.  Halfway between the 14 week long Armor Training at Ft. Knox Ky, we were given PX privilages and we all got sloppy drunk.  One huge Jamaican from New Orleans did the coolest thing I ever saw.  He would rip the tabs off one side of a six-pack, pick it up in both hands and run it back and forth across his lips like a giant harmonica hardly spilling a drop, slam it back down on the table and give a deep laugh like the voodoo guy in "Live and Let Die!!"  
While I am not condoning drinking, this is how even the straightest of the straight got back into it.  Once I got out, my drinking increased to the point where I would drink say 10 kamikase's on 2-4-1 night along with several beers and have to sleep on a bench by a park because I got lost from seeing double and could not read the street signs, or find a phone booth to call a cab.  By the time I was 23, alchohol did not affect me as much as it used to.  I slid into a terrible depression and ended up homeless and working out of day labor.  My family blamed it on alchohol, but it was really deep seated mental illness that had been with me since childhood.  All the alchohol use had been was a last ditch effort to try and change my brain chemistry so that I could feel 'normal.'  My grandfather, a man I love dearly, with only a third grade education, saw through all the bullshit Straight had taught and helped me pull myself together. He built me a crude apartment in the attic on a house across the way, that he owned and charged me a very affordable rent and aside from having to shoot an occasion citrus rat with a pellet gun, it was a damn good living.
     I got it together enough that I was driving a 6 year old Firebird just 8 months later.  It got to the point where I had outgrown the apartment, so I found a nice garage apt in Old Northeast.  I still drank, but it was moderate, with a little pot smoking thrown in.  A 28 gram baggie would last me about 10 days.  The pot actually helped me to drink less.  I was working at a very dangerous tool & die plant at the time.
The owners had converted a bunch of machinery for stamping car parts and they had not been properly set up by qualified workmen.  Pressbrakes were failing every day and I almost got my hands smashed on several occasions.  There was an employee there that was fighting to start a union, a big article in the St. Pete Times, and all my neighbors were suggesting that I quit.  With all the stress going on, my long dormant mental illness flared up once again, only this time, after nearly 26 years, I finally got the help I deserved.  I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began Lithium Treatment immediatly.  I responded so well that I returned to work so whacked on Haldol, that all I did was destroy parts for 3 days until it wore off!!  I still drink occasionally, but I am very responsible with it, and I don't want to go back to working day labor and the hellish existence of my early 20's.

I think it took a week and a half to pull off the Gong Show.  The first thing was to find a gong, and sure as hell, one of the wealthier parents just happened to have one lying around.  It was a blessing to not having any full of shit 3rd, 4th, or 5th phasers in the group raining their durision down on all our heads.  They were all too busy building a stage and making costumes and what not.  I stopped being a jerk long enough to gain talk that Friday and T&R the following Monday.  It was amazing how far we all came along in our programs when we could speak freely about our past without some asshole trying to grandstand on us.  When I say "we" I mean all the first and second phasers in group at the time.  I cannot recall the precise day of the show, but I am pretty sure it fell on a Wednesday so it would'nt mess up any Parent Weekend.  The stage was pretty impressive and Stage Right had the Judges Table complete with a gong. I can't remember who all the judges were but I think it was Dave Crock, Liz Cassidy,Terri WhatsherFace, and Mrs. Pete had veto power.  I think Scotty Cassidy, the parent rap leader was the emcee.  The parents sat closest to the stage in the part of the building used primarily for parent raps.  The only part of this building that was used by us was an old machinery room with 2 doors that was used for when the jerks done pissed off Mrs. Pete or staff one time too many. I shimmied up the pole in there and scratched the words "Jerk Power" with a little fist and my name on the top of the pole near the ceiling, where someone would risk busting their ass even with a ladder trying to remove it.  Hell, it might even still be there to this day.   Anyway back to the story
then.  The group was seated behind the parents and they had "Standing Corporal" 3rd Phasers to stand around the group that nite. The show got under way, and was a real treat, I must say, and still one of my fonder memories of the program.  A few people tryed playing guitar and singing songs and I remember Steve Gay got half way through the old 'Chicago' song called Colour
My World, before Mrs. Pete scrambled over the table and gonged the shit out of his act, claiming the song was an "old tie."  What a Gypp, then the curtains opened and the first music I had ever heard on my program starts playing real loud.  It was disco, for christ sake!!  All these girls file out dressed really nice and start doing this dance routine.  As if on cue, this standing 3rd phaser leans in and goes "Now don't be checking out the girls."  "Shut up you fucking faggot," we all said in unison.  He just stood there with his mouth opening and closing like a fish in the bottom of a boat.  It was too funny!!  The highlight of the show was a skit based on M*A*S*H  that they did vaudeville style.  They put up a sheet and shined a light behind it like shadow theatre.  They had a guy lying on the table and they pulled all sorts of props out of his 'chest wound.'  It was hilarious!!
But the funniest act was done by a guy who had only been on front row less than a week.  During Chris Cassler's synthesizer light show, he slipped away and made it to the back of the group.  He was found a few minutes later in the think room.  I guess he must have thought the doors led to the outside or something.  Another 5 minutes or so, and he could have slipped out with the parents as they left at the end of the show.

When I came into the program, my hair hung down right about to the point between the shoulderblades you just cannot scratch no matter what.  It had taken me quite awhile to get it to grow that long.  I used to even curl it back against itself  and pin it into a ducktail with bobby pins like the "Fonz" when I was around the house so that my mom would'nt notice and make me get a haircut.  I was so burned out on being poor, and  living with a single mother and 3 sisters on foodstamps that I passed for 18 and bought cigarettes and beer for myself no problem.  The folks at the neighborhood gas station had known me for buying gas for my lawn mowing jobs for years and never once asked for an I.D. and I tacked alot of that on account of my wildass hair.  I had signed myself into the program voluntarily so I could live with my dad and reap the benefits of his superior income, only to find out at my first "Homes Rap" that she had been conned into putting me in under a Court Order and that did not set very well with me.  Upon being told that I was not eligible for Talk until after 14 days, I promptly became a world class "jerk." The only thing that I did to comply in those first few weeks, was to agree to have my hair cut.  Back then in Milton Roy, girls 4th phase and up were allowed to cut guy's hair.  I stood in line with the rest of the guys and they had 4 or 5 girls with safety scissors cutting guys hair like we were going in the Marines or something.  This enormous cross eyed girl started hacking away on mine, and by the grace of god, she managed to cut my ear and make it bleed.  She was pulled away and a more talented girl took over.  I believe her name was Jean Trienan or something like that.  She managed to salvage what was left of my hair into a decent looking cut.  After witnessing the mangling of my ear, about 3 guys asked to go back to their seats!!!!  I agreed to get a haircut mainly for the chance to finally be near a girl, really.  I know alot of other guys jumped on it for the chance to look like they were "straighter" and therefore deserved Talk & Responsibility or Home or whatever, but my motives were more basic. Also, with the ungodly heat in that warehouse, I felt it was better to 'feel cool' than to 'look cool.'  That first haircut lasted until the second haircut when we had moved to the Morgan Yacht Building.  By then, it had progressed to where we actually had stools with armrests and the girls that cut hair were either 5th phase, or staff and even had electric clippers!  Jenny Sykes cut my hair and did a damn good job of it.  Hey Marnie, if your still out there, did she ever pursue that as a career?  She was damn good, but I never gave her a tip, cuz 1st phasers were not allowed to have any money!!!

Once I started thinking about Marlene, it only took about an hour before Jenny emerged from the fog.  If Kenny was the guy who was joined at the hip with Greg Wishart and Doug Hemmenger as 5th phasers on the guys side, then yeah, otherwise I never met him.

     Jenny had mousy brown hair, about shoulder length and looked sorta like a cross between Chris Everette (tennis pro) and Cher.  Marlene was pretty easy on the eyes too, but I still cannot forgive the torture they put us through sitting on stools up front of group on those sweltering afternoons in Milton Roy with absolutely HUGE glasses of iced tea leading a rap, with us guys paying rapt attention to their every move.  Watching as you raise the glass to your lips and take a sip.  It was'nt you we were drooling over on the guys side, it was the tea!!!!!!!!  Glad to hear from a familiar face.   P.S.  Jenny also gave me the best haircut ever out of all the "manglers" they had in there. Remember That???

[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2002-07-23 16:18 ]

Wow Mike, you sure hit the nail on the head! I would say about 20% of all kids in my program (including me) came into the program under the same set of circumstances.  Long after the program was over, I would get really fed up with my dad saying over and over, "Thats all in the past, you should get over it."  One time when we were driving around town on one of his famous 'projects,' I got so mad, I threw his favorite Military Aviator sunglasses out the damn car window. Later, when he asked if I had seen them, I replied. "Oh your glasses!  I think I left them in the past."