[Regia-NA] intro

[rmhowe]

J Hill wrote:
> 
> ROFL  I suppose I shall just have to be schizophrenic & do Welsh in the SCA
> & Anglo-Saxon in MCRS & Regia!
> I've always wanted to have a split personality. <G>  [tongue in cheek, of
> course.]
> 
> Jennifer Hill
> Ælfgifu
> Wes ðu hal

Schizophrenic, eh?
Sounds like a definite candidate for an SCA peerage.
Boy, do I know a lot of schizophrenics, and a couple of
near psychotics who run around in maple leaves.

Having worked in Central Prison's nut wards several years and taken
child psychology as well as several other psychology courses
in Education, I knows one when I sees one.

I have met three Jesuses, One Holy Ghost, Batman, Superman,
and Samson in my day, not to mention the really odd ones like
self-mutilators and self-immolators. Put one out. My first 
night working in the prison I was assigned to the hospital
and saw a tag-team of self-cutters from I&J block [worst 42
in the state] going one after the other to the nurse's station
to be stitched up when they weren't busting up their toilets
and throwing them at the guards that night. That leaves them
with a pipe in the wall and a paper cup - something else you
wish they didn't have. You never served coffee over there 
unless it was from the far end of the tier. Someone gets mad
and the whole row will douse you. I never worked that side
myself. [I did face down the Holy Ghost alone two days after he
cut up two guards over there though. I didn't know who he was
at the time.]  Pop McClain got about 200 stitches that night. 
The next night I was assigned to work in Mental Health. Just 
down the hall was a newly admitted guy with Delerium Tremens, 
or the D-T's, screaming -all nite- "They're pinching my head off!"
Alcohol withdrawal.

Samson was a little black guy about five feet tall, a firebug,
who could light a whole pack of matches, hold it in one palm,
put the other hand over it and not get burned. He had one hell
of a scam going. He had tertiary syphilis, at which point it's
no longer communicable, but the brain was being eroded away.
Always wanted to shake hands. Simon Rouse.

Middle of the night - a blood curdling scream that would shatter
glass if we'd had any [everything was polycarbonate]. I'd go back
there alone and look to see what happened. Several inmates would
be in a state of shock. Never found out who it was doing it then.
Learned later he was charging them 10 cents a night -each- not
to do that. I really wish he'd been on the same ward with the
ex-professional wrestler. He killed his next door neighbor 
because his own brother was sleeping with his own wife - and
he knew he shouldn't kill the brother. This guy went full blast
at anyone with a radio. Fortunately I never had one and he got
along well with the guards. The nurses at Dorothea Dix State
Mental Hospital where these guys rotated to when they weren't on 
criminal time did carry radios - a VERY dangerous thing to do 
with some inmates. They think they are mind control devices - 
similar to the voices in their heads - and will attack anyone with one.

[After those guys our SCA Dukes with delusions of grandeur are 
kinda mild. They can still be obnoxious as hell.]

The new guard that disappeared after only two hours working
in the cell blocks with the rest of us barely got a taste.
Went on break, and right out the front gate home. Never
came back, and it was -quiet- that night. ON a good night
we were only outnumbered somewhere over a hundred to one.
Not all were in cells either. The dormitories had up to 180
with one guard locked in on the fifth floor. The next
nearer guards were three floors below, and two barred doors.
I found twelve shanks (knives) and a pair of dice up there
one night poking around alone.

Magnus, OL, twenty-two plus years in the SCA and you might
wonder why I am looking at alternatives.