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Show COL. WILLIAM F. ROOS November 11,2004 that means give me the answer out of this little book. Well, the answer that you would have to say is, "Sir, my cranium consisting of Vermont marble, African ivory, covered with a thick layer of casehardened steel forms an impenetrable barrier to all it seeks to impress itself upon the ashen tissues of my brain; hence the effulgent and ostentatiously effervescent phrases just now directed, and reiterated, for my comprehension have failed to penetrate and permeate the somniferous forces of my atrocious intelligence. In other words, sir, I am very dumb and do not understand." Well, you'd spout all that off. DAN: You still remember it. BILL: You've got to have that just at the tip of your tongue, you know, all the time. But that's the only kind of stuff you can be answering, or any other questions of the upper class master. But you cannot talk back and forth to the other plebes unless there is some special occasion. Like everybody is in intramural. I was on the intramural football team of all things, our intramural football team. And some were in track and things like that. Well, if the team that you were on won during that afternoon, then it's up the upperclassman who runs that table, who is in command of that table. He'd say, "Okay, you Dumbjohns, relax." Dumbjohn is a term they had for the plebes, like Dumbwillie, Dumbsquat, Doowillie, Ducrot, or anything else that came to mind indicating anyone so low as the plebe he is talking to. Well, if the table commandant says relax, you can sit back and talk back and forth and have a good time, for one time. The next time you were back to the old business again. So, anyway, it was getting along towards October, and we had one of these days when we could relax. So, one of my pals was sitting next to me. Here, I'd been sitting there with him for, 21 |
