Who watches the watchers?
I’ll admit it. I suck at WordPress. That being said, the Sheepdog posts have been dropped from the main menu. You can still find them in the older posts, just not in the menu. No big deal. I’ll continue to post story fragments as usual, I just couldn’t have all 7 pieces of that chapter jamming up the menu. Believe me, I’m way ahead of that chapter and as a reminder, not much of this is being posted in order, that chapter being the exception. Thanks for reading!
-CJ
More story to come, just felt like adding this piece to fill some space.
When I was younger, I ran around with a crew, getting into all sorts of adventures late at night. There are dozens of these, each more difficult to believe than the previous, so just take this at face value. I was there, it did happen, it was even documented in newspapers later.
On one adventure, we took an elevator to the top floor of a parking garage, then walked the ramp up to the rooftop. Looking around, there was nothing unusual, just a 4 foot retaining wall on all sides, so cars didn’t just go flying off on the very top floor. One of our group said, “goodbye cruel world”, and jogged towards the front wall. We all stood wondering what was next. He vaulted the wall with one hand placed on top and yelled “aaaahhhhh!” as he disappeared from sight. Half of us panicked and rushed the wall to look over. And there he was, squatting comfortably on a concrete pad that extended way past the wall. Everyone had a good laugh, and some of us took a seat on the edge, dangling our feet in the air about 7 stories up. A woman on the ground was walking towards the garage, heard the calamity, and looked up to see us. “Daredevils!”, she yelled, and shook her fist disapprovingly. That really set us off and everyone was wheezing laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
Our group learned the wall jumping trick, and some of us would splinter off into other groups, taking them there and repeating the joke. Sometimes on the west side (front), sometimes on the south side.
Would have been cool to stop there, but another group that we didn’t even know also went up there months later, repeated the trick, but on an abnormal side. There was one problem. There was no concrete pad on that side, only on the other three. Someone jumped the wall not knowing this, and flew 7 stories down to the sidewalk below. It made the newspapers in Oklahoma City.
Needless to say, we felt that death had cursed the site and we never went back; maybe once to say farewell and jump the west wall while recanting the newspaper story.
The parking garage is still there. We left a symbol carved into the aluminum divider between the glass panes on the west side elevator exit, maybe the 5th or 6th floor.
It’s time for a true story.
Years ago I worked as a cable guy, little more to it than that but I’ll keep it short. I went to Fayeed Shabazz’s home to work, and as I was dealing with his computer I looked over and noticed a taxidermy joke. A beaver, posed menacingly, bared teeth and claws forward.
Fayeed was downstairs and came up to check progress. I asked him about the beaver and he had a story. Was trying to fit in with the local Texans so they took him on a hunting trip. Gave him a shotgun and said shoot anything that moved. He was losing hope as the group marched through the property and he was still empty handed. Near a creek, he saw a jack rabbit duck into the tall grass at his feet. He got excited and yelled to the men that he had a chance. They said just wait til you hear it move and point the shotgun straight down.
Something rustled and he took the shot, blindly. A moment later and the men found the animal and started laughing. He killed a beaver instead. He vowed to take it home and get it stuffed anyway. Which he did, and from that day it was in his home office. He would ask people if they want to see his beaver which sounded like a joke at first. But no, he had a stuffed beaver posed for the attack and it was pretty funny.
The end.