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104 lines
4.6 KiB
HTML
104 lines
4.6 KiB
HTML
<HTML>
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<TITLE>T E X T F I L E S</TITLE>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000">
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<FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00">
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<B>WHERE DID YOU GET THESE?</B>
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<P>
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When you're in the 9th grade and it's the middle of Social Studies,
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the last thing you expect is to hear the principal's voice booming
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over the speaker system calling your name. On the other hand,
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it provides you with an amazing excuse to get out of class and out
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into the (relative) freedom of the hallways.
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<P>
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In fact, it was well along on my trip to the Main Office that I
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even started to think about what possible reasons existed for me
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being summoned out of class. Brewster High was a real lock-down
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dump of a school, all of the inner-city grey pallor and lack of
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hope without any actual gang violence or gunplay. Very few
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opportunities existed for getting in trouble, unless you cut class
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or beat someone up. I hadn't done either in distant memory.
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So, happily, I figured it was just some neat errand they needed
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me to run or maybe an important set of questions that had to be
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asked of me in regards to my school records or something.
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<P>
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When I rounded the corner and went into the office, there was the
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principal, which I expected. There was also my mom, which I did
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<I>not</I> expect. And there was a tall, stolid looking man, which
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I also did not expect. He was dressed in a nice neat suit and
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had the kind of look that said he was sizing you up out of habit.
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Mom, of course, looked somewhere on the dark side of devastated,
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which tipped me off that things were awry, but not yet without
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a positive side. After all, mom was the skittish type.
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<P>
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After motioning me into the office, all three watched me intently
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while the principal went on a nice roundabout path of speech, a
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real work of art that I now know takes years to perfect. For a
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while, I wasn't even sure the problem rested with <I>me</I>..
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Maybe something was wrong with my dad? My brother and sister? Had
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something weird come up on my medical exams? The principal
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talked in buzzwords about personal responsibility, and finally,
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the other man said:
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<P>
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<I>"We'd like to know about where you got the plans for Nitroglycerin."</I>
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<P>
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Ohhhhhhhhh, crap. The man introduced himself as being from the FBI
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(double ohhhhhhh crap) and they weren't here to punish me, they
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just wanted to ask me where, and if at all possible, to maybe explain
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why I was selling working plans for Nitroglycerin at $.50 a pop to
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fellow students.
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<P>
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You know, I'd forgotten all about that. A bunch of us had hung out
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in the computer room after school, taking the late bus to get home,
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and there I knew a ragtag bunch of computer kids with Apple IIs and
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Commodore 64s and the like. Unlike a lot of them, I had a modem, and
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unlike a lot of them, I was downloading textfiles from a whole slew
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of boards. When I had smarmily mentioned that I had found plans for
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Nitro, they all got wide-eyed and wanted some, so in a great fit
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of bravura, I'd been selling them copies of the printout. I wasn't
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even sure it worked.
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<P>
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Well, turns out one of the kids' father was a policeman, and he'd
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handily forwarded it down to the local FBI office, and they'd sent
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an agent over to have a little chat with me, having them call ahead
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to my mother to come attend the discussion. I can imagine what they'd
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told her.
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<P>
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Luckily, even though my collection of textfiles was dozens of disks
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deep by that point, I could tell them exactly where I'd gotten them;
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from The South Pole, a survivalist BBS in 312, Chicago. I remembered
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the place because they were loaded with file after file about building
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silencers, pipe bombs, nitro, gunpowder, handguns... in short, if
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it blew shit up, The South pole had a listing for it. I was 13. This
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was cool. I stayed up until 5am one night and just took every file
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they had. Humor wasn't the order of the day for these people; they
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were into the coming revolution, and they wanted to be prepared. How
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old they were, what they were really up to, I have no idea.
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<P>
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The agent took the name of the BBS down, shook everyone's hand, and
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said he would investigate things (The BBS went down three days later.)
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So, having just flipped on a BBS I'd barely known, I was left with a
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Principal trying to remember So The Kid Had Bomb Plans Speech #45a
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and a mom who wasn't sure where this fell in the parenting handbook.
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My mother indicated I would be dealt with, and explained how I was
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a nice, intelligent kid who'd messed up, and she'd speak with me.
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They left me alone with my mom in an office for a while, and the first
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thing she said to me was:
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<P>
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<I>"I think you should take a break from the computer for a while."</I>
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</FONT>
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</BODY>
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</HTML>
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