Posted by Mad Mutt on 4/10/2008, 9:25 pm, in reply to "I'm Absolutely OFFENDED!!!"
24.254.199.195
I would ask ALL graduates to re-read this one from Mr. "M" with an eye to grammar, spelling, composition skills, and, MOST of all, an eye to a true "PORTSMOUTH HATER". I still live here at age 60, and love my hometown. You don't have to live here to love it, but you can't be gone from it for 30-40 years, and disparage it because you don't even know how good life is, still right here. Get a clue, "Doctor Madblood"!!!
Yo Jason,
Your views remind me of the people on the deck of the Titanic as she was headed to the bottom of the North Atlanta in 1912. You were the one singing and hoping for the best. I was the guy getting into the lifeboat to make it out safely to get back to land and tell the "real" truth of the drunken captain who took his eyes off his only mission and cost thousands their lives. I escaped from Portsmouth before the ship sank. I made it out before the end came. I was part of a generation of escape artist who made it to dry land. I got an education, a great job, a wonderful wife, 3 great kids who showered me with 8 grand children and now my first great grandchild. I did all this without being dragged into the big ditch known as Portsmouth and having to fear my children and their children going through the bankrupt Portsmouth public school system and suffer the permanent scars of an inadequate secondary education that would have left them disadvantaged for life. I saw the sinking ship and got into a life boat before the end came. Others weren’t so fortunate.
My gripe is not with you personally or any of the students currently at Wilson. Their parents made the decisions regarding their plight in Portsmouth. Moreover, my distain is with so many who came before us both and who left us all with this sinking ship. I view those left in Portsmouth over the last 30+ years the same way I view refugees from disasters all over the world. They have one life to live and unfortunately chose to spend that life in Portsmouth or any one of thousands of places like it. I view myself as extremely fortunate to have had the insight to see the end coming and to have jumped off a sinking ship. Now in my 60’s with the best years of life behind me, I look forward to these remaining years spent with my family in a part of the country that has become my home for many years, without the fears that would have come by having done it all in Portsmouth. I know I’m not alone… there are tens of thousands just like me. However, like Benjamin Franklin said, “One man right is a majority”. I don’t need confirmation or affirmation. Portsmouth is a stink hole and the school system and what remains of WWHS is all part of the same picture. If you sleep with dogs you’ll get flees. If that’s what one chooses for their self and their family to follow them… so be it… but thank God, it wasn’t my choice.
Finally, for those of you who read this and agree or disagree with my thoughts… please chime in! “Man is master to the spoken, slave to the unspoken.” Your silence is only confirms your disinterest in the decisions you’ve made and will make in life.
