Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd - The Wall - 1979

From 2000-2002 I worked for a small dot.com down in the financial district. Our boss/CEO was easily one of the most odd people I have ever encountered in my life. He was a former Israeli tank commander who kept photographs of the people he had killed on his desk. He was a rabid stoner, who would shut the door and smoke up in his office and then come out yelling and screaming that we weren't working hard enough. Despite having lived in this country for many years, his English was still awful and his spelling worse. I wrote most of his emails for him...and the ones I didn't write were nearly unreadable.

So one friday evening we were all sitting in his office with a six pack when he opened with one of his usual bizarre non-sequiters. He was speaking to the british salesman in our office and he says something to the effect of "Ehhhhhh (he always begin with a long "Eh") Chris! I feel bad for you British people...it's like, when you are school kids, ehhh, you have to walk into that thing that grinds you up. Makes you hamburger It seems very sad."

Now, to this day, I'm still not sure if he honestly believed that british school children had to walk into a meat grinder as part of some intiation, or if, he actually understood the metaphor (or even what a metaphor was) of the school system as part of british societies culture of repression but either way, it was an odd moment from an odd man.