>>Tom,
>>After I graduated highs chool I had no intention of going to college. I talked my best friend into going into the service on the 'Buddy' plan. I was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He was the boy from the good, church going family. I took a test, made 95%, and qualified for rocketry at some "cape" somewhere. We both went to down town Denver to the inlistment center to get our physicals and ship out. He passed and I failed. Hammer toes. Got classified 4F, IIRC. I was devistated at the time. Ended up going to the Barnes School of business to study data processing on IBM 402 tabs and the rest. Later on, as my college degrees increase my qualifications for cannon fodder increased also. I was 4A after graduate school
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>>Our paths might have crossed if I had made it to the cape. My buddy ended up going to Korea, and the experience messed up his life. The last I heard he was a used car salesman in Denver.
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>Jerry;
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>For anyone who may not have had the "best" family relationship - the real job in life is to provide a good family environment. No reason to continue problems from one generation to another unless that is the desired effect. This is easy to say but requires heart and soul to make it successful and is well worth the effort.
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>Tom

I think you are absolutely right. I came from a broken home. When I was seven I was sleeping on the floor in the basement. My mom was running out on my dad and came down to the basement to get my step brother. She stepped on my hand on the way out and the last words I heard her say were "shut up and go back to sleep". The next nine years, till my dad kicked me out of the house, were total hell. It started with physical abuse and brutal beatings with anything handy, a step mother-step brother combination that was the reverse of Cinderella, and culminated in my step-brother and I having a shoot out with .22 rifles. I am very fortunate to be alive today. So is he. We were both very good shots and even today I am amazed and thankful that I missed him about 15 times at 100 yrds. I regularly took birds out at the range with a single shot to the head.

I attribute my survival to encountering Faith and a good women, my wife.
BTW, my step-brother is visiting in a couple of weeks. We are good friends and were both victims of that environment.

It amazes me though, how quickly anger can arise when I encounter certain situtations which are similar to those of my childhood. One never really gets over that stuff, you only learn to live with it. When I was rasing my children I asked myself how my dad would do it, then I took the opposite route.
JLK