Still Spotting

When I was ten years old, a trio of self-righteous teachers at Mark Twain Elementary in Duncan, Oklahoma decided I was fair game for mental and phsyical assault after frankly telling my classmates that I did not believe in a supreme being when they frankly pressed me about it. These three hateful shrews used every trick they could come up with to try to break me, to no avail, as is obvious by my continuing lack of belief to this very day. That is not to say I wasn't shaken by their attacks. I had never experienced such focused, coordinated abuses from any adult, much less from school teachers, as those three pulled on me out of sheer, bible-thumper-driven spite. Fortunately we moved away from that lousy little town to a bustling metropolis of almost 1.5 million people where my anti-theism wasn't an issue.

The Apollo missions were rocking along with Saturn V launches commencing that year and living in Houston was like living in the future compared to the podunk town where teachers were overtly ignorant and cruel to their non-believing students. Another fortunate thing that year, too, was my grandfather going to work as a field agent for the Oklahoma Able Commission. He sensed my stress level was elevated that summer while visiting them before we moved to Houston, and took me out on his territorial circuit to do a bit of still spotting as diversion from the bullshit I had been enduring at the hands of religiously fanatic teachers.

As we approached the edge of The Breaks, he handed me the binoculars he always carried in his state-issued Mopar cruiser and instructed me to scan the horizon for plumes of smoke. My thrashing over mistreatment received at school instantly evaporated under the thrill of that hunt. He always knew how to bring release from pressure of the unsavory aspects of life.