SNAKE PIT 12-14-2012

SNAKE PIT

preface:  This is a blog.  If this does not make sense
just wait.  It is a blog and I am writing a story that
begins long , long ago.

Long , long ago one of the individuals in a community
would be "acting peculiar", "funny" the people used
to say.  So, they called the Sheriff or the cops and
the policeman would examine the person and if he
decided the person was really "funny" he would take
the person to the "asylum" where he would be
retained, examined by psychiatrists, categorized and
observed.

Eventually our leaders discovered that many of their
constituents were being kept in asylums so they
opened the gates of the "snake pits" and turned the
patients loose .

Our Democracy thrived and flourished.   More and
more rules were enacted by congress, giving the
citizens more and more rights.  

Many of the citizens were under the care of psychiatrists
and psychologists, but they still retained their rights.
Evenutally the "inmates" prospered, exerted their
rights and some of them became the people in charge.

There was a terrible murder in a school in the East just
today.   The anti-gun faction is going crazy.
But,

Just today some crazed individual was reported to
have killed thirty three children in a school in China
----with a knife. 
Of course there is little said about that incident.  That
is in a different asylum.

You think I am kidding about the inmates being in
charge.  Right ?

Long, long ago when I was a Pharmacist Mate in the
Navy I worked in the "mental wards" of a large Navy
hospital. 

One day  I was in charge of the lunch room .  I was
assisted by a group of the more ambulatory patients.
Under me in rank was a mental patient (patient boss)
who dispensed the food  and eating utensils, knives
and forks, etc.

This boss, who was physically large, good looking and
had a lot of vitality  started throwing the patients
around, acting intensely disturbed.

I tried to calm this individual, but he became more
violent .   He attempted to strike me.  I susequently
got a head lock on him and choked him out.
Then I secured him in a locked "quiet room" and
informed Ms. Wamble, the head nurse who summoned
nurse Stephens and they rushed off to attend the
patient.

After attending my other duties , and patients, I passed
the locked , quiet room and looked in to see how the
violent patient was doing.   The two nurses (in charge)
were sitting on the floor.  One of them had the patient`s
head in her lap and the two were stroking his head.

If I had realized he was their,s I would have called them
to stop his violent rampage in the first place.

The next week I received orders shipping me over seas.
My leaders had spoken.

As I entered a mobile hospital  in New Caledonia the
first person I saw was a Lieutenant who had been my
former commander.   He was in patient clothing and
was hanging on to the fence in an  area for disturbed
mental patients.

Even back then I was becoming aware that disturbed
individuals were making the rules.

This is being continued.   Unless of course I am ordered
to stop it by one of --- the--- patients ?

-----John Crowley
       (aka--Eagle Cruagh)