Forum / I had flipped a boat, I had crashed cars, I had done acid, I had gotten dumped, I had finished my requirements junior year.

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    Smiley McGrouchpants, Jr-Esq-III
    Feb 01, 06:04am

    Greg OBERTING and Jim BUCKLEY were both 8 years old, as was *I*, in 1980, when Reagan was elected. My aunt, calling from a G.E. (engineer) household, called (slightly) before it was announced on the evening news, to tell us, "Reagan won!!!" Greg and JIM, whose *uncle* had *CONVERTED* Reagan to conservatism, were like, "Well, ha-ha, I guess REAGAN'S in ... "

    I'm *sure*.

    So I show up at Academy in 8th grade and I'm like a nutcase, or from the planet Mars -- I swear, we went to DC on a class trip, and when Sen. Alfonse D'AMATO approached us on the steps of the Capitol (or whatever-it-was) to give us a little talk, I have no memory SHELF for whether he said a few words, askance and *sotto voce*, to Jim Buckley. I just thought he was coming out to talk to the kids from the private school in Albany, one of the corny things you do in the job, like teaching them about good government and all that, like "I'm just a bill!" on Schoolhouse Rock™ on TV, or going on a field trip during the school DAY to Schuyler MANSION in public school 5th grade, because the Northeast is loaded with historical sites, you can basically *TRIP* over them, and besides, that's the historical stuff people *LIKED* in the '80s, the Thanksgiving stuff, the Ben Franklin flying s kite, the George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, particularly for *kids*, so, at the time, there was a lot to *LAP UP*, and more fervently and more avidly and even with more *PRIDE* than in most of the country, so you had to wait until you were older-OLDER to get past it. There was a lot to wade through, and arguably, there SHOULD be, even if most of it was corny and distorted.

    A had a lot of relatives -- three sibling's wortg on both sides, plus *more*, cousins, uncle's into the *horizon* ...

    I watched a lot of TV, music, movies -- I kept up with popular culture, magazines, etc. I kept my grades up.

    I went to the University of Chicago, where we all read: Marx/Engels, Freud, Foucault, Max Weber, Adam Smith, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Thucydides, and Durkheim *inescapably*. It was part of the Common Core, not by choice for people who were choosing undergrad. degrees in English or History or Physics -- you *had* to do, it was part of the educator Robert Maynard Hutchins's *plans* for the place, and such as it was, if it didn't need to be updated so much as re-*injected* and not rote requirements taught be professors down-and-abouts on the tothem pole, looking to *start* but not *eager* about grappling, these days, with the *basics* ... *still*, the place was very proud of (having) these priorities, and arguably, perhaps *in*-arguably, with good reason.

    My life was doomed from the day I stepped on Albany Academy campus, and, as would inevitably HAPPEN, somebody asked "Hey, isn't that guy NOT *ASKING* if he -- "

    "I Went to School with Jim Buckley ... Mother-FUCKLEY!!!"
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59591785-i-went-to-school-with-jim-buckley-mother-fuckley

    alt. title, for sensitive Amazon.com ears:
    "I Went to School with Jim Buckley: A Story of Horror and Chaos"
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09LMNC1C6/ref=x_gr_bb_kindle?caller=Goodreads&tag=x_gr_bb_kindle-20&ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=02457ef2-61c5-414c-9701-0f4e9409205f

    Hope you enjoy!!!

    Thanks for your time, and your *attention* ... always a pleasure.

    [STEPS DOWN FROM THE PODIUM]

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