Yes, dear blog reader, the Curmudgeonly Professor was diagnosed as a psychoneurotic when he was 20 years old. Just married, a baby on the way, and in my senior year of college, I and a busload of my fellow students were summoned from Laramie to Denver for physicals and inductions. No graduation in May. No college degree for who knows how long. Gone for birth of first baby. Straight from infantry ROTC at the University of Wyoming to snow-covered foxholes in Korea dodging bullets. It was a scary moment in all of our lives. Then the cardiologist at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital determined that I was psychoneurotic with a psychogenic cardiovascular reaction. In other words, I had palpitations of the heart and I was nuts.
On the Fourth of July my thoughts wander a bit to the fairness or unfairness of my not serving in the military while many of my classmates left school and some did not come home. It has been comforting all my life, however, to realize that I am nuts. This diagnosis excuses me from any necessity to act rationally. No one wants to mess with a psychoneurotic curmudgeonly professor. But I have often thought of my friends and classmates and their experiences during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. One never knows what life has in store for us. And I have always been grateful for what others have done in my stead.
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