Through the Looking Glass

This is the cadence of life.

Ebb and flow, come and go, highs and lows. What then, stays static in the time-line?

Thirty years ago; or in terms we can easily understand, in the era of the FIRST singer for AC/DC, I took up valuable space in the learning environment known as  Palmer Preparatory in Miami, Fl.

The only nuggets I’ve retained after all these years are:

A) How to roll a joint. (Topography, spacial relationships, dexterity and adhesives)

B) How to light it. (Combustion - which is 1. fuel 2.oxygen and 3. ignition or flashpoint)

And C) The mechanics and physics of bong operation. (Bernoulli principle.)

Although I don’t really practice these “skills” much anymore, it is interesting to address one’s retention traits as we get older.
For instance, I can still recite Xanadu from Coleridge; The Gettysburg Address; and a bunch of stuff off the Periodic Table of the Elements.

Sidebar: None of which has EVER come up in a boardroom meeting in Silicon Valley…

Although, I have actually fired someone based on the tenets of algebra. Really! He didn’t come to work on time, perpetually late, yet did manage to finish his work load daily. Unfortunately, I had 20 guys in a warehouse in Walnut, CA, 50 in Bangaladore, another 8 in Taipei who DID manage to arrive at the preordained time. So it was “I know you got the answers right, but I wanna know HOW you figured…i.e. Procedure matters.
But I digress…

I would say that other than the pot thing, I ‘d have to really reach back into the annals of adolescence to fetch any thing that I, as Shakespeare once said, “give a shit about”.

Nope, can’t summon up anything from those days (years?) that bore fruit later in life. (Read: “Someone paid me for knowing it.)

However…….. I DO have one exception to this doctrine…

I remember AND cherish each and every person whom I had had the pleasure of calling Classmate.

I’ve been rewinding the tapes, reviewing the written form and perusing the photo sets of the thirty years reunion of my fellow “Pirates”.

No matter how many of the afore-mentioned bong skills I indulge in; I CANNOT AND WILL NOT REFER TO said classmates as “Falcons”

Everyone looks great and everybody would appear to have found their “place in this world”. And dear reader, appearance IS everything!
(Can you tell I’d been in California too long?)

Final summary judgement…A Kudos to all Pirates past and present; and thank you for being, persistent little buggers that you are, in my thoughts and memories for the last thirty years.

Rock on Pirates, Rock on!

M. Marcus

p.s. Bon Scott really did kick ass, right Mad dog?

p.p.s. Thank You - Robert Yarbrough. They actually PAY me to write this stuff!!

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