I had to give some stern discipline to my son this weekend. An onerous chore, discipline is never something I look forward to. But I know it is necessary. The Bible tells us “he who spareth the rod hateth his son…” and I must agree.

For I fear that without course correction early on, my son might one day turn out like a guy I knew growing up.

Here was a prime example of an undisciplined, defiant, rebellious boy who apparently knew no boundaries, and who eventually dropped out of society altogether.

It was in the mid-seventies that our paths crossed for the first time. A mutual friend introduced me to Adam Vater (his name has been changed to protect his identity), a guy who seemed likeable enough at first. He had a beer in one hand and a huge smirk on his face.

I wasn’t too comfortable with the party crowd myself, but my buddy reassured me that Adam was a decent guy and didn’t hang out with the really rowdy ones much. He was more of “everyone’s friend.” Adam said that he was envious of my copious use of sesquipedalian verbiage, and we struck up a friendship.

The three of us started hanging out together, frequenting the video arcades and pizza joints. Adam said he had a way to get free games out of nearly every system in the arcade; something about shuffling his feet on the carpet and zapping the frame with his finger. It never worked for me, but he managed to play pretty much all day without so much as a buck to his name. Later I caught him distracting the arcade’s proprietor while he filched tokens from behind the counter.

Adam was always good for a laugh, and liked to be in the center of the action whenever there was action to be had. But he never knew when to quit. He was the guy who smuggled in two cases of beer to the roller skating rink,

and convinced the staff that he’d reserved one of the party rooms. The manager eventually kicked the whole group out, and banned Adam for life.

The day he turned 18, he told me he’d “broken free from his captors.” From that I understood that he felt like he’d been held back all these years, and could now truly wreak havoc upon the world. He got his own place that same year, one with really bad cabinetry.

He began collecting oversized russet potatoes, and spent his time building archaic siege engines. His house became overrun with beagles, dogs that he claimed would only eat raw squirrel meat. It was truly sad to see him deteriorate so.

I lost contact with him not many years afterwards. I’d moved on to other things, becoming more solid in my career path and my desire to settle down with a family. When I last talked with him, Adam said that he’d been stricken with a virus named “Bob,” obviously some coded phrase that would mean something in an underground slang of which I am not familiar.

I learned my lesson, though, and vowed never to let my kids veer so far off track.

And if you believed a word of this, then I must be pretty convincing. NukeDad, you’ve been blunked! Head on over to World of Weasels, Momo Fali’s and Suburban Scrawl to continue the harassment.