Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 13) Happy birthday, I threw away your dog
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I couldn’t understand it at the time, but Dr Gray was giving me a valuable lesson about society. He wanted the cross-country team, and my brother to witness a public whipping, and for me to feel the withering effects of scorn. Unfortunately for reasons of ignorance and remorselessness, I failed to feel anything … in fact he did me a favor extracting me from a bullshit school obligation.

To the ordinary social citizen however, a public scorning serves two purposes. First to demoralize the bad guy and let him know he didn’t out-con the sting, and secondly, it bands the remaining people together into a stronger herd.

It’s like a ‘perp-walk’ or when the boss fires someone; everyone suddenly wants to be polite and eager to please group goals. Cows are the same way, they’re happy when the other guy gets knocked over and eaten, and equally happy that someone else has taken pressure off the herd.

It’s truly a magical moment for all but the fallen cow. But things are not what they seem because life is complex and these incidents cause the release of powerful emotions. These strong emotions are obviously required by living things, which means people who cause change, as mad as it sounds, ultimately cause positive things to happen.

Anti-social people always believe they are doing good work. However there is some truth to this claim. Societies need ‘changers’ like me because we are the grit that gives traction to society’s wheels, and without changers, society would stagnate and die. We changers bond people together.

Wise people would argue that only great leaders can cause positive change, but I ask, did the sheriff cause better history than Billy the Kidd? Does ‘bad’ always do less than ‘good?’

I say all change is a cumulative effort of society, and it doesn’t happen because one man is more law-abiding than another. Life is a confluence of many opposing things. I am one of those opposing things. Dr. Gray is another. Neither man resolved the issue that day and neither man fully understood the issues forwarded by the other man, but both caused a change.

Only if you unimaginatively believe in ‘ultimate right’ can you claim which man held the greater influence over future events. All you can truthfully say is that each action is the product of an endless series of interrelated events leading back to the beginning of time.

That’s pretty philosophical, but events were altered the day that Dr Gray threw me off the team. My brother probably lost esteem among the other runners, and maybe the entire team became stronger without a C+ runner aboard.

No matter how the checkers got sorted out, ‘somehow’ my father became aware of three extra bicycles in the garage.

His subsequent inquiry caused us to load up everything and drive to an illegal dump-site, where we threw it all down a ravine. A passing motorist noted his tag number and the court issued him a citation for illegal dumping. LOL.

It could’ve been worse, but it serves my father right for turning our beloved family dog Archie loose out in the country on my younger brother’s birthday. Happy birthday son, I threw away your dog. My father never admitted it, but said the dog was getting into people's trash cans. Maybe that was good reason, yeah. Still, to an imature man's mind at that age, it caused a silent riff between us that never quit.

Chapter 14) I’ll never forget the act of kindness
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