re: How is your life better because of the highly esteemed poster, Harry Rex Vonner?

HRV means a lot to me for many years. Most of you don’t know this but he and I grew up together on a military base in Arkansas.

Our dads were both army guys and were (briefly) prisoners of war outside Germany. My dad told me this story where escape attempts were becoming a problem, so the German guards would try to break the American’s spirits by making them do mindless things. In particular, they would make the prisoners stand in a line and all move their heads like a clock back and forth and say, ‘tick tock tick tock.’

HRV’s dad (who was a very sarcastic guy by nature) realized he was unable to escape or otherwise change his situation, so he chose a very subtle rebellion. He would do the head motions, but instead of ‘tick tock tick tock’, he would wait until the guards were further down the line and switch to ‘tick tick tick.’

None of the guards noticed this was going on for many months, until finally, HRV’s dad was caught “ticking” by a senior SS Captain walking behind the line.

The captain stopped the exercise, walked over, face-to-face with HRV’s dad, and said “Ve hav a rebel in ze ranks. Vell, don’t vorry, ve have vays of making you tock.’

It’s really the little things that I remember about those stories that warm my heart.