Freddogg Off The Chain

I was a sophomore at football camp in 1962 and it was hazing ritual night. I had no intentions of showing up for the traditional degradation not the least of which was running through a gauntlet wearing only a jock doused with wintergreen.

I was amazed that so many teammates showed up for sanctioned humiliation because of what may happen to them. I was very clear on the matter. The first person who touched me was getting punched in the face.

I did have an older brother on the team named “Moose” who was 6’5”250 pounds but he wasn’t in the habit of sticking up for me but also he wasn’t going to help the rest of them deal with me either.

Let’s just say it was a senior named Herb who came into the dorm room and grabbed arm and attempted to pull me out the door. I warned him first before punching him in the face. Suddenly I was the designated sociopath.

The team chaplain came to counsel me and he was so serious but behind him hanging from a closet door was a cardboard skeleton and we had manipulated the long arm and hand to make it look like Philly sign language “I got your skeleton right here pal!”

I got the “they came to crucify Christ” speech that somehow was broken down to a hazing ritual gone bad and I responded, ”If I were Christ I’d have driven railroad spikes into the head of Pontius Pilot or at least fought back and not gone whipped puppy to live out some biblical fable of atonement.”

The priest wanted to put wintergreen in my jock by the time I was through messing with him and that’s the way zealots react when you attack their icons. I was hazing him and he didn't like it. I could tell he wanted to hurt me.

Later in life, after starting for the Temple University football team as a sophomore, I transferred to Kent State in Ohio. That’s before the National Guard whacked four young demonstrators, talk about hazing.

Kent had a ritual that all freshman and transfer students had to wear beanies the first month on campus. Once again I was forced to defend myself as several morons carrying musical instruments tried to forcibly place a beanie on my head. I still would rather die then submit to a formalized humiliation that delights others and I've never again had to injure four people in some blunt force tuba overreaction.

I never attended mandatory faculty meetings as a teacher and I was particularly repulsed by the concepts of weekend retreats and team building. “Fall backwards and we’ll catch your gay ass, you fucking loser—just relax!”

I remember a beginning of the year first day of school for teachers only let’s alleviate the depression without drugs back to school meeting. The administrators brought wheel chairs and masks and before I knew it teachers actually submitted to be pushed around to experience helplessness but trust in their colleagues. I grew up with a wheel chaired father and I was really getting fucking annoyed. But then the ultimate in Psychological induced brain trauma occured when everyone was standing up in the school cafeteria, the music was vibrating through the underpowered intercom system, and they were doing the Macarena.

I escaped to a faculty lounge and started punching myself in the head like an autistic kid fending off a hug from a fat aunt. A teacher joyfully poked her head in the door.

“Fredman, the principal said to come get you, that they had something special just for you."

‘Tell him and every other Macarena Maniac still in the room to go fuck themselves.”

I need to patent a tee shirt, with an image of my barebones skeleton from 1962, just supply your own words to fit the occasion, ”I’ve got your Macarena Right Here!”

Peace Freddogg