Freddogg Off The Chain

I read on a radio website-I am a bottom feeder-that a public school student was busted for marijuana personal possession amount while another student was arrested for dealing because he sold a Ritalin pill to a buddy. How is this news worthy?
Did you know that Ritalin stimulates the self control center of the brain-hyperactive maniacs can’t inhibit spontaneous behaviors- but if you don’t need it you just get this incredible focus in case you’re a teenage boy who must spend three hours taking the SAT in a room filled with a least a few pretty girls ripe for sexual fantasies.
Back in 1984 one of my senior students was in a coma at the local hospital because the afternoon before another one of my students sold him eight pills for eight dollars. The hypoactive barely conscious during his most alert moments Jimmy took all eight pills on the way home employing the Warren Zevon philosophy of “I’d rather feel bad that feel nothing at all.”
“Jimmy The Ingester” got home and proceeded to fly around the kitchen slamming himself into the screen door like a yellow jacket in the waning moments of his life cycle. And just before Jimmy crashed into the produce aisle of awareness he told his mother that he swallowed eight pills given to him by “Henry the Percolator.”
Jimmy had swallowed so much caffeine-'the dumb ass took them all" Henry asked that his autonomic response system shut down because it couldn’t keep up, knowing there was no way Jimmy could talk for two straight days.
It was touch and go-comas are wise like that-but Jimmy came back from wherever his lazy ass had gone to wait it out.
And one afternoon at 1:30 during the last period of a school day he decided to come back and re-enter and resume his life and not surprisingly he choose my class.
Jimmy walked in the door in the back of the room and slowly walked to the front and sat down. There was not a sound because high school kids have never seen post comatose guy before. They all just stared and I played the silence like a deaf drummer just watching Jimmy adjust himself into his seat. And then I spoke.
“Pepsi Free, what is up?”
That June when the yearbook came out there was Jimmy’s graduation picture and underneath his name it said “Pepsi Free”. He had proudly adopted the nickname.
I was shopping for plastic items of low quality last week at the Dollar Tree store and there was the 40 year old manager running a register with an expressionless face making no eye contact with anyone.
He grabbed my catnip rodent with his left hand without looking up. “I wanted Pepsi Free but I’ll settle for this mouse, ”I said.
The guy never looked up. “How’s it going Fredman?”
Pepsi Free is cool like that.

Postscript- "Henry the Percolator" was expelled from school for being in possession of drugs while riding a school bus while Pepsi Free was allowed to return because he didn’t take possession and go coma kid until he got off the bus. That was a big issue 20 years ago.