I tried further education in the Army, that went south very quickly and I managed to wangle a medical discharge. I tried further education in a junior college and a university. Those went pear-shaped because I had no idea what I was doing nor who to ask for advice or help. When I was in the Army, I requested and was allowed to visit the Mental Health facility at Ft. Benning, which had the Martin Army Hospital. The staff at the Mental Health facility had no idea what to do with me. I was suffering constipation, panic attacks, night sweats, and a general sense of not being anywhere that I was really supposed to be. I did not make a good private. I knew more about the military than some of the officers. I knew history, tactics, terminology, weapons, and a whole pile of stuff that got in the way of being torn down as a boy and then built up as a man.

When I got out of the Army in October of 1980, I was back where I started, bored, confused, frightened and lost, only I had the added burden of remaining stunned from my basic training experiences. I was pretty close to useless. The folks I had lived with for the final months of my high school days before I graduated and went in the Army didn't want me back when I got out. So I moved back in with my grandma.

Then came years of nothing.

I did learn to smoke in the Army. I never was much of a drinker, until I turned 21, bought a carton of Luckies, and went down to the local bar, the Double J, and ordered a shot of tequila. Six months later I was drinking on the job and carrying a bottle of tequila in my back pocket everywhere.

One night I got so drunk that when I woke up the next morning I was throwing up and couldn't keep down water. I called in sick to work and spent two days trying to get bits of bread and pear chunks to stay down with water. I was living in the basement of Red Fenton's house at that time. So that was three years after I got out of the Army, 1983.

I am now 46, thirty years after that momentous 16th year, and I still live in a haze of boredom, confusion and frustration. I have learned to pretend to be normal up to a point. I am still big and now I am hairy and a bit fat. I have grey in my hair and beard. People think I am younger than I really am. They tend to talk down to me or make fun of me. I live alone but not trully successfully. My mental ages range from 7 to 17, sometimes within the same sentence. I have my own crayons.