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Michael McLeod
Let me pitch in here as the other Mike:
I remember a single encounter with Mr. Mannon. I was being an idiot and he called my attention to it. Gently.
I can't piece the details together but it was just the two of us in a hallway, Whatever I was doing was childish and loud -- and instead of talking AT me, yelling AT me for whatever it was, he utterly startled me by conversing with me, however briefly, in such a way that - almost as if we were equals -- he wanted to pose a question for the two of us to consider. He said something along the lines of: "You're acting like an idiot. Is that how you want to lead your life?" He posed that question as if the two of us were on equal footing when it came to trying to figure it out. By doing so, looking back, I realized he was tacitly saying to me: "You're actually not an idiot," which struck me as a novel notion, particularly coming from a grownup. I often felt like an inmate in high school; like nothing much was expected of me except trouble. Then suddenly there was a grownup talking to me as if I was a grownup, too, or at least a viable candidate to become one if I could work the kinks out.
He made me feel, in that moment, like I was worth something, that I was better than how I was acting, and that I should behave accordingly.
Dave: Your Jeep story was a classic military tale in what I call the "insanity in uniform" genre.
War in general is insane, so there are many, many permutations and entries in that particular category.
I've never seen it done but I bet you somewhere at some university some inventive modern lit professor has taught a class entirely devoted to insanity in uniform.
It would start with "Catch 22" or maybe "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Then maybe "Slaughterhouse Five" and "The Red Badge of Courage" and of course The Illiad and the Odyssey and my favorite, Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" - lord knows how many stories than man wrote about war - and oh of course "Gone with the Wind" and I suppose if we wanted to get really dark we would have to include passages from "Mein Kampf."
All this makes me want to take some books off the shelf and just read all afternoon instead of correcting papers.
Adn finally: Has anybody else gotten a new air conditioning system installed lately?
I just did. I have future shock. Guess I was living in the past with my old system. I feel like I'm in a space ship.
I haven't posted for a while, hence the length.
ps Yo Larry. Lighten up.
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