Freddogg Off The Chain

This day started for me at 5 a.m.when I opened an email from a former Temple football teammate who is on my “off road” mailing list, telling me that another teammate was “Dead and Cremated” and for a person who knew so much I didn’t know shit and it wasn’t up to him to tell me. He requested I take our dead friend off the list and him also and I told him that the late John could speak for himself.

People are all the way whack that is for sure and I’m certain that includes me. Last Friday at a Happy Hour I was telling a friend and small audience about being attacked by yellow jackets. This woman was standing there and thought I was so clever and funny but when I said I sprayed hotshot into the ground's access hole and mentioned “you are not supposed to stand behind the can for safety reasons” and she asked “well what are you supposed to do” and I said, ”hire a Mexican.” It then got weird because her husband standing there was Mexican in a Don Diego looking sort of way.

I used to ask my students. “What’s your dad do Kathy?” “He pretty much stays dead Fredman.”

There was the time I talked about a student who committed suicide and a girl ran out of the room. “What’s wrong with her, ”I asked. “That boy was her cousin,”I was told.

Another time I told the class a true story about the president of the senior class who robbed a small store and shot the woman clerk who knew him in the face just because she calmly told him not to do it that it would ruin his life.

A boy named Harry spoke up, ”That was my mother he shot.” “And how is your mother doing, ”I asked. “Fine,” he said. “You can hardly notice unless you look at her.”

The topper was a story I told about a former student and track athlete of mine who stalked a young woman and one morning hid in her van as she delivered her toddler to the baby sitter. Something dreadful happened inside the van and the woman was shot and killed.

The guy claimed he was walking along and came up on the scene. Some local guys knew he was bullshit, beat him and called the cops. He was found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to life without parole.

A 17 year old Afro American Horatio Alger scholarship winning girl raised her hand and said, ”That was my mother Fredman. I was the little girl in the van.”

I apologized saying I would never have told that story if I had any idea and she said she was grateful because no one in her family would ever talk about it.

So you see sending emails to a deceased friend I didn’t know had expired is not extraordinary behavior for me. And I don’t consider these forays “stepping into it” they just are what they are.

Go In Peace

Father Freddogg