Lost Status Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive Have any of you thugs out there ever beaten on someone and then realized what you had done, only to start feeling sorry for your victim? Well I had an instance like this when I was around 15 years old. I guess I was one of those kids who grew rapidly on the physical side. Mentally I was probably dragging behind a bit, whatever. We had a program in high school called "Leaders". This was for students who may have seen themselves in a physical education type career. Now this was right up my alley. The "leaders" program was for grade 10 and 11 but your had to qualify during your grade nine year. The part that was not up my alley was the sucking up to the gym instructors during your ninth year. Somehow I was managing well until this one afternoon. The way our gym program worked in high school was we would focus on a given sport for three or four weeks and then move on to another. This was great because students had a chance to see what was interesting or boring or what they might excel at. During the time in question we were focused on wrestling. I totally hated wrestling. I mean I hated being touched. Call it adolescent homophobia or what ever you want I just was not cut out for this crap. Regardless you had to participate so I suffered for a couple of weeks. At the end of each class we had to roll up the wrestling mats and pull them off the gym floor to make way for the next class or event. At 195 Lbs. pulling a mat was a breeze for me. At the time I was also very into playing guitar and I maintained the fingernails on my right hand a little longer than normal. This was good for guitar but a problem in some other circumstances. When it came to pulling wrestling mats it was a real grip enhancer. There was this one guy in the class who weighed in at 110 Lbs., his name was Marshall. A good guy as far as I knew. I never wrestled against him because of the weight difference but he seemed cool. Then this one afternoon I am pulling my mat across the floor and Marshall yells "hey Simpson" and leaps on my mat, stopping it on a dime. This tore the fucking fingernails completely out of my right hand and I had an electronic automatic reaction. I turned around curled my fist up and drove it into Marshall's stomach so hard his eyeballs hung from the sockets for at least two seconds. Unfortunately this did not help the pain that was developing rapidly in my right hand. Blood began to spill from under a couple of the nails and I was deeply angered. At the same time while all this happened I noticed the incredible Mr. Spence watching our every move. The next thought in my little mind was "no leader program". The next thing I heard was Mr. Spence saying "Mr. Simpson that is it... no leader program for you". I thought to myself "good, gym teachers are fags anyway" but I refrained from verbalizing these thoughts. Of course only seconds later I looked over to see Marshall buckled on the floor crying. This was my moment. My moment of guilt. My moment of feeling sorry for my victim. My moment of asking myself "what kind of idiot am I"? As it turned out the pain in my hand was not the worst part of this. I was later brought before the board of moronic physical education people who found that my actions should deprive me of a career as a physical education professional. What it really meant was no leader program. I got over this became good friends with Marshall and had a blast through my years in high school and... I still have long nails on my right hand! Some things actually change your life, other things save you from doom.