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Today's Featured Biography
David Petrie
DISCLAIMER: If you are offended by self-deprecating humor that makes light of female physiology, then maybe you should bypass this biography. Otherwise, proceed at your own risk.
I grew up on a small wheat and dairy farm East-South-East of Pratt. For my first eight years of education, I went to the classic American, small country school, Glendale Grade School. At its largest during the baby boom of the sixties, it had 63 students spread across the eight grades. When I was young, we got a dairy cow, and my Brother and I milked it by hand before going to school in the morning, and in the evening after coming home from school. This cow had female calves which grew up to be milk cows in their own right, and gradually the size of the dairy grew. I think it was about when I was starting high school, that we had several cows. A neighbor had a milking machine which he was no longer using, so we used that to milk the cows. The size of the dairy grew to where my brother was milking about 30 cows when I was away at college.
When I was in grade school, and high school, and some when I was in college, my Dad farmed two quarter-sections of land (total of 320 acres). This was in addition to the 30 acres of land where we had the dairy. So we had a total of 350 acres. Not a very large farm, by todays standards, but it sufficed. So I learned early (even before the legal driving age of 14) how to drive a tractor, and was quite busy cultivating and harvesting the wheat and milo fields of our farm. When I was about midway through college, a family friend had developed health problems and was forced to quit farming. He asked my Dad and Brother to farm his land for him. This effectively doubled the amount of land that my Dad and Brother were farming.
After the eight years of grade school, I went to the high school in the local town of Pratt, starting my Freshman year at Liberty Junior High, and then three years at Pratt Senior High. There, I played football my first three years, but was kicked off the team at the end of the season my Junior year for goofing off during practice. This turned out to be devine fortune for me, because the last day of practice it was raining heavily (I got to go home and just milk the cows). The next day, the last game of the season, there was an outbreak of food poisoning in the school cafeteria. The football team had to take a bus to the last game, in Hays, KS., about 120 miles away. I was able to spend the time at home in bed, recovering from the food poisoning. But according to stories I heard, the whole team got sick about half way through the game, and had to ride that bus home late that night. Apparently, there were numerous incidents of kids puking on the bus ride home.
In addition to playing football for three years in high school, I participated in Track and Field my Freshman year, in the shotput and discus events, although I was not very competitive in either event. I was also fortunate enough to be elected Student Council President for my Senior year of high school. This brought home to me the true meaning of the state motto, "Ad Astra per Aspera", which translated means: To the Stars with Difficulty. I could achieve just about anything I desired, if I only put my shoulder to the millstone and pushed.
After high school, I went to the University of Kansas in Lawrence. The first four years of my undergraduate studies, I lived in Grace Pearson Hall, which is known as a "scholarship hall". The students who lived there received a discount in their room and board, in exchange for doing the cooking, cleaning, and general daily upkeep of the hall. The hall consisted of suites of three rooms: two bedrooms and a common room where we otherwise lived and studied. There were a total of four students to a suite (two students to a bedroom) and a total of 48 students to the hall (small by regular dormitory standards, just three floors and a basement where the kitchen, dining room, and TV room were located). After the first four years in the scholarship hall, I spent two more years in college living in a couple of apartments near the college. During those two years, I finished the work necessary to receive my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Electrical Engineering.
After graduating from college with my Master's degree, the only job I was able to find was with the Navy in a research lab in San Diego. That turned out to be fortuitous as I worked for the Navy for ten years, and ended up living in San Diego for 26 years. Suffice it to say that in 2002, I moved back from San Diego to Kansas to be close to family, where I am effectively retired.
I left the Navy after ten years because there was a change in management, and the new management team decided to implement an "HIV/AIDS Avoidance Program" (the major emphasis of this program was to "sit on your butt and keep your mouth shut"). As I had always considered myself to be an industrious and technically creative employee, I found my personal goals to be at odds with this new management philosophy. For anyone aware of the recent porn surfing revelations at the Security and Exchange Commission, and most recently, the Mineral Management Service of the Interior Department, you can see that HIV/AIDS Avoidance has become quite popular in the Federal government bureaucracy.
When I left the Navy, I worked for a couple of companies in the San Diego area. One was a GE subsidiary that developed software and systems for Computer Aided Design. The second was the defense contractor General Dynamics. In both instances, I was laid off after a year to a year and a half of employment, so concluded that my services were needed only long enough to fix the company's computer problems, so decided to embark on my own independent computer consulting enterprise. I was able to work in that capacity for several companies in San Diego, as well as Anaheim, Santa Clara, Sacramento, Portland, OR., Colorado Springs, CO., and Spring Hill, TN. It was while working for a client in San Diego in 1997 that I developed schizophrenia, and went onto Social Security Disability in 1998. And as I have stated before, after living in San Diego on disability for a several years, I moved back to Pratt to be close to family.
About my experiences on the social scene: While attending the reunion in 1995, I was asked by a classmate, whom I had first met when I was in the 5th grade (I'll let her do the math and see if she recognizes herself), why I had never been married. At the time, I had no good answer, other than perhaps that I suffered from latent Peter-Pan Syndrome. But having given it some thought since (and am still unmarried), I'd have to say that I have yet to meet a woman who despised her parents that much. But maybe I should qualify that by saying no woman who wasn't otherwise in some degree of a relationship at the time.
Another factor is that I grew up in a family that put a lot of emphasis in arranged marriages. As a result, my social closing skills were arrested, at best (it was the 60's and 70's, remember? At the time, social mores about sex were coming apart, and my parents weren't that unhappy to see me sitting on the social sidelines). Since that time, I've developed a combination of low self-esteem mixed with a darkly misogynistic sense of humor.
When I lived in San Diego, one of my favorite places to visit was an area known as Old Town. It is a collection of historic sites, museums, botique shops, and international cuisine restaurants that is largely managed by the California Park Service. In the 70's, before the area became as "touristy" as it is today, I was walking down one of the sidewalks, doing some weekend window shoppping. A woman about my age approached me, and without introduction, said to me, "I'm free tonight." Without missing a beat, I smiled back at her and said, "And I suppose that the implication is that you cost other nights?" If you could have seen the look of consternation and puzzlement on her face, you might begin to appreciate my belief that women have no sense of humor.
In the 80's, when I was living in San Diego, I became the imspiration for Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No to Drugs" campaign. It seems that she was visiting friends in San Diego, and they were having lunch at the restaurant of one of San Diego's premier Single's Bars. Mrs. Reagan excused herself to visit the Ladies' Room, where she found etched on the wall the inscription "Just Say No to Dave." The rest, as they say, is history.
I did gain some notoriety during the 80's and 90's by setting the record for most consecutive strike-outs in San Diego's Mission Valley Single's Bars, eclipsing the record set by San Diego Padres pinch hitter Champ Summers (though his were baseball strike-outs, mine were social).
My living in Southern California after college did allow me to make a couple of small, but not insignificant contributions to Hollywood movies. It turns out that my experiences in college were a large inspiration for the John Belushi character in the movie "Animal House". And the "Star Wars" character Jabba the Hut was largely inspired by me. If you doubt me, the next time you watch either of these movies, look for my name in the "Special Thanks" section at the end of the credits.
Most of the women I encounter my age have taken the menopausal oath to not be seen in public with me. Others, to paraphrase the comedienne Roseanne, subscribe to the belief that menstruation is the blood oath that women take to not have sex with me. On the bright side, I do happen to be the national poster child for common-law eugenics.
My quack/doctor says that I suffer from a congenital deficiency of fat-burning enzymes, so I work out at the local gym for a couple of hours five or six times a week, after which I prefer to "stew in a pheromone cloud of my own juices". Since retiring (although I don't engage in it much any more), I have been dabbling in Bio-Chemical Engineering (no, not a meth lab in my back room, but converting beer, wine, whiskey, and margaritas to urine).
I'd have to be honest and say that my retirement is pretty pedestrian. I work out at the local gym a couple of hours each day. I find myself spending several hours a day watching TV (current events and sitcoms and their re-runs are a passion). In addition, I'll also spend about an hour a day on the computer, reading my E-mails, trollng Internet dating sites, and posting comments on several blog sites (look for me on foxnewssunday.com and townhall.shamudave.com). I have been able to reconnect with my old friend Jimmy Hammond on Facebook, but am wary about that adage that describes sexting and social networking sites: "Got any naked pictures of yourself? Like to see some?"
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