Thinking Out Of The (T.O.O.T.) Box

... or, as my grandfather used to say: "If you don't toot your own horn, nobody will."

The Short Version:
So many people are reaching back 15, 20 or more years into the past with sexual abuse accusations ... and making hundreds of thousands of dollars suing ... that it seems like a great strategy to cover my income needs for the next 10 to 15 years.  Here is my plan:

The Long Version:
It all began when I turned 75 in April.  That was seven months ago.  I became semi-retired and, with that change in status, my income began to drop.  In each succeeding month my income has continued to go down little-by-little.  I am now close to being in the same boat as 9.1% (or 10.5%, or 16.7%, depending upon which ethnic or nationality-affiliated group you are talking about) of the people in the US who are unemployed. 

Since I am not one to accept entitlement benefits from state or federal agencies I have had to evolve a strategy for supporting myself by "Thinking Out Of The box," or TOOT(B).  I have been forced to create TOOT(B) because TOOT(A), i.e., Thinking Out Of The box-Plan A (salary generated by working for one or another large corporations) has cocked me a snook and left me searching for creative answers to survive.

Hence, the new TOOT(C) Plan (Thinking Out of The Box-Cash Option):  I will describe here, with some detail about how it will be implemented.  First, a little background about my High School teachers and coaches.  We had a Physical Education teacher (who was also a football coach) who was a former Marine, a sadist and a believer in corporal punishment.  When any of the kids in Gym Class would misbehave he would take us back into his office, close the door and proceed to "set us straight" on what we had done wrong and how we could "make it up to him."  (You know what THAT means, don't you?)   What he did vis-a-vis physical punishment will not be described in detail.  However, actual punishment did include verbal insults, and comments on how poorly we performed calisthenics, episodes of what he called "necessary physical contact" (again, you know what that means) and diatribes on how miserable our state of physical conditioning was and other specific and general critiques of our useless existence, usually screamed at us.  He also gave us each a failing grade for any day we showed up with dirty gym clothes.  He went so far as to check our BVDs personally (and probably sneak a peek down our drawers) almost daily.  If the BVDs didn't come out sparkling, the next thing we could expect was a Giant Wedgie, which would definitely result in our having to take our stuff home and throw it in the washer.  Suffice it to say, he punished every kid in the class at one time or another.

In addition to the physical punishment meted out by the coach, we were also psychologically tortured by, among others, our Latin teacher.  We were forced to actually learn that dead language ("It will help you immeasurably in English class later"), read aloud "Caesar's Gallic Wars" in Latin in front of the whole class and recite many long passages from memory to get any kind of passing grade.  It was pure torture. 

With this knowledge commonly known to our entire High School class, I am putting together a class action law suit which is going to be based on this Psycho-Sexual Physical and Psychological Abuse perpetrated on us during our 10th, 11th and 12th grades.  My intention is to sue the coach and teachers (whether still alive or currently dead), the school system, the past and current school board members and the city council members to whom the educators report.  The amount of the suit will be determined by how much money I want for "pain and suffering" all these years and be driven, in principle, by Pareto's Law, which says 80% of everything that gets done is accomplished by 20% of the people.  Therefore, I am going to contact the most active 20% of our class in the belief that we can get 80% of the suit done in record time.  In addition, my plan is to split the (est.) $100 million this way: 80% of the $100M will go to the 20% of us who brought the suit.  The other 20% of the money can be split among the 80% who didn't lift a finger to help us. 

We have as a consultant to our group, an image specialist from D.C., who will counsel us on how to use innuendo, vague threats, completely unsubstantiated accusations, and stories that you couldn't even pull out of a cocked hat if you were the world's best magician.  We also have a journalist who has worked extensively with sensationalist rags like "The Enquirer" and is an expert in using inflammatory, accusatory, off-the-wall language, epithets and slurs.  We will use his talents to make the language of all the details in the law suit as wild and out of control as is humanly possible. 

The fact that none of the abuse accusations that will be made in this suit are totally fictitious is irrelevant.  The suit is not based on truth, it is based on the desire to make money and, if similar suits that have been filed recently are any indication of success, I think that I will have found the solution to my lack-of-income problem. 

About the future: once I am back on my feet financially, I am considering making sexual assault and / or abuse charges against Kim Cheo-seon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunuch) for behavior "unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman" (OK, gentleperson) and Marilyn Monroe (in abstentia, er, absentia) for two-timing me with JFK.  That will fix HER image once and for all.