Tax

 One of the people that I worked with at the store in Ft. Worth was a girl named Alex.  She couldn't have been taller than 5 feet, but she was very funny, and I liked her company.  We went out some mainly for dinner.  

 Besides her working at the store, she was also a CPA.  Because we hung out a lot, she offered to do my taxes for free.  This was long before one could do them online, because there was no internet back then.  You either had to try and do them yourself, or you could hire a professional to do them.  I had already been audited in the past, so I felt that I needed someone that knew what they were doing.  That was Alex.

 She was being paid by folks to get their taxes done, so she decided to delay doing mine.  After all, I wasn't paying her.  My taxes were really not that hard.  I had a job that paid an hourly wage.  She told me that she could get some deductions for me that I didn't know existed.  The idea of a big refund was enticing.  So, I cut Alex some slack in getting my taxes done.

 As April 15th got closer, I would ask Alex if she had done mine yet.  She would say no and to be patient.  April 13th?  Not yet.  April 14th?  Soon.  April 15th.  Still nothing.  I was sweating bullets.  I had to get my taxes.  I had until midnight to get them in the mail.  If not, I was going to be in trouble with some folks that I shouldn't be.  Especially after Alex had my info for over two months.  At 10pm that night, she called to say she had them ready.  I drove over to her house and picked them up.  I should have owned stock in Tums for the amount I was taking.  I got down to the main post office downtown and dropped off my taxes with about an hour to spare.  I didn't get that big of a refund.

 I moved on from Alex.  I hope she still doesn't procrastinate.  I went back to doing my own taxes.  It was far less stressful, and I filed early after that.  Even though "Procrastination" is my middle name, even that was way too much.  

Followed

  I have always been a little paranoid.  A psychiatrist once diagnosed me as having paranoia.  Probably because people followed me.  During my anti-war activities in the early 70's, there was an FBI guy following me.  When I was in Europe, there were a few instances where one or more of us were followed.  Being a little paranoid has kept me alive.  It is not paranoia to be aware of one's surroundings.  They teach you that when learning karate.  And, when I was bullied all the time in junior high, I found it necessary to have eyes in the back of my head to keep from getting jumped from behind.

 One Sunday night, I had just left a house in a rich neighborhood of Columbia.  I had gone to a friend's house for a church youth fellowship.  I was driving my Mother's 1956 Dodge that was black and silver.  It was a great car, but it drove like a bus with fins.  I was in a neighborhood that I was not familiar with.  It was dark and no streetlights.  I took a wrong turn trying to get out of the area and found myself lost.  

 As I was trying to find my way out of there, a car pulled up behind me.  It was filled with high school kids.  The headlights were pretty bright, shining in my car.  They got up on my back bumper and started honking the horn.  I got scared, so I speeded up.  They stayed on my back bumper.  I had no idea where I was, so I made a turn on another street.  They kept following me.  I have no idea how many turns I made, but at one point I didn't see their lights.  I thought I was home free.  Then, I heard their car approaching me.  I turned off my headlights, and they drove past me.  I could tell they were looking for me.  After all, I wasn't from around there, and my car was a '56 Dodge.  I saw them turn around to try a find me again.  I pulled out from my hiding place with no lights and drove right past them.  I waved.  I kept on going in the opposite direction, and I found my way out of the neighborhood.  

 I know my parents wondered why I got home so late.  I never told them.  I didn't want them to take away my driving privileges.  I never went into that neighborhood again at night, until I was an adult.  Not Paranoid.  Just Survival.

Rum

 Presbyterian College was much different that Anderson College.  One thing in particular was the availability of alcohol on campus.  If we had been caught drinking on campus at Anderson, it would have been grounds for expulsion.  Or at the very least, suspension.  Anderson was a Baptist school.  Students were paranoid.  The city of Anderson was dry which meant no legal bars in town.  Even when we ordered wine in Rome on our AC college trip, we had to be careful not to breathe on anyone.  

 The first thing I smelled, when I walked into the dorm at PC, was beer.  The school was far more lax about that.  One could drink in the dorms, but they didn't let you have alcohol in the classrooms.  At least, as far as they knew.  I had a class after lunch called Voice & Diction.  It was taught by my Drama teacher.  He was a great director, but he could be boring sometimes as a teacher.  The one thing they let us do was to bring cokes into the class after lunch.  Somebody got the idea to add a little rum to the cokes.  At the time, rum was my liquor of choice.  Even though this was not my idea, I have to say it helped get through a boring class.  Those of us who did this laughed at all of our teacher's jokes.  Even when they weren't funny.  We were drunk.  He never knew that he wasn't funny.  We just laughed.  

 I can't say I learned a lot in that class.  Except for maybe Diphthongs.  And, how not to slur words.  If anyone is a teacher and lets students bring sodas or water into class, you might want to check the containers.  Just a thought.

Jury

  I have been called for Jury Duty twice.  I believe that it is one's civic duty to serve on a jury, even if the pay is terrible.  It can also be incredibly boring to sit on a jury and listen to things that you had rather not.  They really should prescribe caffeine in hunks to be on jury duty.  Especially, if an attorney wants to ask the same question of a witness 50 times to see if they will tell something different than the first 49 times.  

 The first case I was on involved a man who fell out of a tree with a chainsaw and broke both legs.  He was suing his neighbor, because his neighbor's small son was holding a rope which was tied to the tree to help steady it.  In turn, the man with the chainsaw could work without the tree moving.  Well, a gust of wind came up which caused the boy to struggle with the rope.  The man lost his footing and fell to the ground.  We saw very gross pictures of a surgical procedure on the man's legs along with pins and rods in his bones.  Because the child was a minor, his father was the one being sued for letting his son hold the rope.  I felt sorry for both parties, and especially for the bad blood these neighbors would have as long as they lived next door to one another.  After the attorneys did their summations, we retired to the jury room to deliberate.  When we got back behind the closed door, we started laughing.  How could a man sue for damages, when he was up a tree with a chainsaw and expecting a 9-year-old boy to keep him from falling?  And, the neighbor couldn't control a windy day.  So, we were ready to find in favor of the neighbor and his son.  Just as we were ready to deliver our verdict, we got word that the two parties had agreed on a settlement.  They shook hands and called it a day.

 The second case I served on was about a man charged with speeding through Five Points and driving drunk.  The police had observed a man driving 60mph.  When the officer stopped the car, he smelled beer on the driver's breath.  The officer asked the man to do a breathalyzer test, but the man refused citing his constitutional right to privacy.  A passenger in the car was also caught urinating behind a business, when the police car rolled up on them.  The man said he had been to a bar with a friend.  He knew he would be the designated driver, so he had non-alcoholic beer.  He was driving fast, because his friend needed to find a bathroom, and he didn't want him to go in his car.  It made perfect sense.  Who hadn't been in that situation before?  We believed the driver and found him Not Guilty.  Another issue about this case was that the I had been to school with the Prosecutor.  When the judge asked if anyone knew a party in the case, I raised my hand.  The Prosecutor and Defense  both said I was okay to be on the jury.  I think my friend thought I would find for him and not the defendant.  Sorry, Bob.  

 And then, there's this.  After the trial was over, I was talking to a co-worker about the case.  He had a side job of working as a bouncer in the bar, where this guy said he was.  My friend told me that the bar didn't serve non-alcoholic beer.  The defendant had lied.  Had the prosecution looked into that fact, the defendant would have been found guilty.  Oh well.  Sorry, Bob.