Our opinions on most topics are based on a combination of personal experience and education.  When I heard the topic of the school “drill” on Dan’s show today I had mixed feelings.

It seems that the kids in Sussex Central High School were put in a lock-down situation without any advanced warning that it was a drill.  Police were present almost immediately, adding to the stress.  Some folks were locked in storage rooms.  Pretty dang scary situation in an age when school shootings are becoming more prevelent.  Kids were calling their parents on cell phones, whispering as though a loud noise may draw the attention of an armed lunatic.  Staff, also not informed of the drill, were phoning loved ones with a detectable level of fear in their voices.

On one side, I say drills are a crock.  Always have been, always will be.  People most certainly act differently during a fire drill than they would if they saw flames or smoke.  I always wondered why teachers knew it was a fire drill in advance.  I thought to myself; “What a dog and pony show this is, I wonder how calmly we’d line up and leave the school if flames were lapping the roof?”

Well, now I see the other side of that coin.  If you don’t tell folks it’s a drill you get panic and fear mixed in with a very real picture of how the school and it’s workers and students would react in a REAL situation.

So, which is better?  I don’t know.  I’m still working it through.

Just where can I apply for a job as an activist?  I keep reading about activists on the Associated Press newswire and am amazed by how many people are making a living this way.  Somehow I think I missed my calling.  I blame my parents.  When I was a little guy I was a born rabble-rouser.

At the age of 7 our next-door neighbors, the Makarowskis, went out of town on a long vacation.  This deprived me of two of my best playmates for almost two weeks, Carl and Mike.  Depressed and looking for something to do I needed to use my imagination.  It must have been working at full bore one evening when I was standing on the street and convinced some nearby friends there was a man in the basement of the Makarowski home.  I swore I could see someone lurking in the dark through the basement windows and I was sure it was a burglar looking to take all the Makarowski’s worldly goods.  It wasn’t enough that I had this delusion but I managed to convince several other neighborhood kids there was a burglar in the basement.  They followed me as back up when I kicked down the Makarowki’s basement door. 

 
It’s also when we discovered the basement was only damp and dark and had no intruders.  This may have ended quietly but the sound of the collapsing door echoed around the block and my old man happened to hear it inside our house.  He was most displeased.  He didn’t appear to care that I’d been concerned about my neighbor’s property and home.  He seemed much more concerned about fixing the hinges on the door before his friend Marty and Marty’s family returned home.  My old man was a cop back in those days and he may have also worried that an open door was a greater invitation to any burglars.
 
I don’t recall if my bottom got tanned.  It got tanned frequently enough when I was a kid and in memory I can’t separate tanning sessions.  I can recall my dad was almost as noisy as the falling door.
 
This should’ve ended my career as an activist.  While it’s probably why I’ve never joined Neighborhood Watch it wasn’t a career ending move. 
 
A few weeks later a man living across the street and around the corner on Bristol Street had a letter published in the weekly hometown paper.  In this letter he announced he would be shooting dogs that wandered onto his property and watered the grass.  Among the other things dogs do when walking.  I didn’t read this in the paper but my parents discussed it at dinner.  It spurred me to take matters into my own hands. 
 
The next day I organized several of the neighborhood kids, including, I believe, Carl and Mike and the Schoonover boys, Tim and Tom, and armed them with large sticks.  We then walked up the long and sloping hill that was Bristol Street and the entire time I was leading a chant that we were on our way to get the man planning to shoot dogs.  When we got to his property the best of my recollection is that he just looked at us totally perplexed.  I can say I didn’t know the meaning of perplexed at the time but that was the look on his face.  He told this neighborhood rabble gathered before him there wouldn’t be any problems if we took better care of our dogs.  It was a bold and strategic move on his part because we turned and left.  For all I know we dropped our sticks on his property and left him another mess to clean up. 
 
The dog march would’ve been lost to history and memory but that night I announced my success at dinner.  I brought it up because it would’ve only been a matter of time before my sister, I’m Gonna Tell, informed mom and dad.  Once again my dad was distressed.  Apoplectic is probably a better description but I didn’t know the meaning of the word when I was seven. 
 
At the age of 7 I didn’t know the meaning of activist but I did know the meaning of a 2-week grounding.  It ended my activist career.  Then I discovered radio and later the Internet.  It makes for a great career choice but we don’t use large sticks, if you don’t count the transmitter. 
 
 

So this woman dropped me an e-mail Monday and reprimanded me for a joke I made while on-air.  Simply put I mispronounced a local name because I hadn’t taken the advice of a woman I work with.  And of course I said because I don’t listen to women I make these mistakes.  My co-worker had given me the correct pronunciation but three hours later I couldn’t remember what it was. 
 

How dare I display a sense of humor about the relations between men and women?  I’ve said before there are some neighborhood grouches who telephone our shows and I’ve said these men are the ones screaming at kids to get off the lawn.  Now I’ll inflame the women.  The one sending me the email wasn’t named Gertrude or Bertha or Gwendolyn but she just as well may have carried that tag.  You don’t see those names much anymore among the most popular names for children.  Therefore the majority of women still using those names are 85 years old and from my experience just as grouchy as “Hey you, get outta my yard.” 
 

Not that all women 85 years old are grouchy but it’s the retired schoolteachers who most often rebuke me for things I’ve said on the radio.  I’m not talking just about my twisting of grammar.  I’m talking about the Maude’s lack of humor.  These women still read Nancy when they do read the comics and these women still think Nancy is the ultimate in humor.  Satire is lost when it hits the ears of Maggie. 
 

I did send a reply to my e-mailer.  It said my actions explain why I’m single but that I’ve got a peaceful existence when at home.  For me that may be the best part of living.  No nags mean I can sleep a full 8 hours each night and my dirty socks get washed when I want them cleaned, which is about once a week.  I mean, it isn’t like I wear the same unwashed pair everyday.  I’ve got at least 3 pair in the sock drawer.
 

Not that I’m expecting much fallout from this blog.  It’s not like Ruth Ann’s generation knows how to use a computer.  When I worked several years ago for a TV station we had a computer reporter doing stories a few days a week.  One evening some Millicent telephoned the newsroom to demand that we stop going on TV and calling people yahoo. 
 

You get my point, too busy stacking tins of cat food to pay any attention to the modern world.  Longing for the resurrection of Lawrence Welk and to dance with a spiffy fellow in a Panama hat. 
 

So remember folks, don’t upset these women.  I’ve done it and I’m considering a longer blog on this topic, perhaps even a short story.  A Thorn for Emily. 
 

Hope she never discovers where I actually live.  My atonement will be that she comes by everyday and does my laundry and cooks me glazed beets.