Pryor Scrapbook Dr. Joe, 1982

-3- "Alright, Pledge Wry, I'm giving you one last chance. If you fail to blow up the enemy tank this time you will become a 'permanent dud'. And not only will you brand yourself as a dud, your fellow .pledges Rhodes, Istre, andWoodhouse will be duds also. And these facts will certainly have to be brought before the court tonight when you face your judge." Jon swallowed hard. He didn't know what it meant to be a permanent dud, but he sure didn't want to find out. "Come on, Jon. You can do it!" Istre said. "Yeah, Big Jon; get that tank!" said Rhodes. "Get him, Jon. We're with you, Man!" added Woodhouse. Jon got down on the ground. This time instead of being on his knees he was on his hands and toes like a pulling guard ready for the snap of the ball. His shoulders were hunched in grim deter– mination and he was listening intently. We had planned to let him get me this time so I got about 15 feet in front of him and began making my tank noise. · Jon quickly located my position and when D. Mark gave the command to fire he camecharging for me with the reckless abandon of a wild boar. I tried to back away from him when I saw how hard he was coming but that was like trying to back away from a locomotive. He hit me · _, right at the knees and would have knocked me down if I hadn't had a tree next to me to hang on to. When Jon hit me he immediately exploded, but Rhodes, Istre, and Woodhouse were still on their countdown. So to make it harder for him I tried to pull away from his grasp, but Jon wasn't about to turn loose. He just hung on tight and kept exploding. "Two • • • " "BOOM! " "One • • • " "BOOM! " "Whoosh?" "BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! I got him! ! I got him! ! " Jon screamed leaping up and down. All four pledges quickly found each other and were jumping and hugging and beating each -other on the back. D. Mark, Byron, and I just looked .at each other and grinned very b i g. We had succeeded! We had taken four strangers with different backgrounds and were putting them through a challenging ordeal (however ridiculous) where all were encouraged to work together and we were seeing the beginnings of that attitude of heart that all of us in TNT work so hard to achieve - Brotherhood.