Jeffrey Kitzler Kitzler

After attending the 10th year reuinion of Springbrook 79, I was walking back to my car (a Pinto of the same vintage as our diplomas- ah how the classics are neglected for passing fads!) when I was violently set upon by a roving pack of zombie meerkats, working in the nefarious employ of one Sergio Vladimir Yukio Wainscotter-Goldstein, the anonymously infamous millionaire recluse and Notary Public. My attempts to free myself from the clutches of their tiny, poorly socketed teeth proved ineffectual- I was dragged into a waiting van, where I was clubbed over the head (an expedient which could have been exercised at the outset, saving much time and parentheses) and thereupon learned that unconciousness and migraines are not mutually exclusive.
I awakened to find myself on a concrete factory floor, attired in a coarse but somehow stylish woolen cassock. I was siezed upon by more foully undead semi-rodents, and put to work assembling faux antique pocket watches to satisfy the greed of Wainscotter-Goldstein. Fed on nothing but the charred remnants of expired meerkat zombies, worked unmercifully, watered infrequently, never seeing the sun, my spirit fell into deepest despair- my mind teetered on the brink of the edge of the precipice of the chasm of madness. I escaped that afternoon.
Making my way through the surrounding jungle, I planned to find the headwaters of the Amazon, and cling to flotsam while riding the currents to freedom. One thought occupied my mind- revenge on Wainscotter Goldstein, with or without a hyphen. In retrospect, it was probably unwise to wander the uncharted jungle, dwelling on only one thought, and an immediately irrelevent one at that. I heard a puff, felt a sudden sting to the back of my neck, and abruptly lost the power of motion in my extremeties.
The ensuing years, spent among the Xcdicoat tribe, were at once unnerving and terrifying. Although, to my relief, they were not cannibals (accusations of cannibalism being the third most common scam amongst anthropologists, trailing only linguistic relational frauds and the ever popular lost 10 tribes grift), but they were not above using me as bait to capture food. Not that I objected, not at all. My status as bait meant that I was an integral, and if I may say so an essential part of the hunt- bound and hanging upside down, I treasured my sense of purpose. And of course there was the fact that I did not speak a word of Xcdicoat. On the whole, I decided on a course of stoic resolve. Punctuated by fits of screaming, almost feral rage.
An opportunity to escape (why are you stilll reading this?) presented itself some few years later in the form of a feckless anthropologist, who hacked his way through the low growth and surrounding population to study and catalog the last of the uncontaminated native tribes. He found this particular tribe dunking a shrieking American in the river to scare up the seasonal pirhanna run. He took 155 photos, two videos, and then presented the chief of the Xcdicoats with a new set of golf clubs. Nice touch.
That night, after the tribe had gone to sleep, I slipped out of the camp, purloined the Golf clubs (I'd seen the chief play- these weren't going to help his slice) and carefully slid his fiberglass canoe into the waters of the Amazon, and made my escape downriver. I have spent the years since in tracking Wainscotter-Goldstein (although, as a single experience learner, I have always forced myself to keep at least two thought in mind at any one time. Just now, for example, I'm imagining revenging myself on W-G with a Bay City Rollers CD, headphones and quick set epoxy, but at the same time I'm considering the question of why you're still reading this)(that was one honker of a parenthetical). I have traced him to a hacienda in the frozen tundra of Siberia, only to have him escape moments before I showed up with enough rock salt to thaw his entire estate. In Istanbul, he left behind strands of hair in his haste to escape my "Reclusive Millionaire Motel". But I will have him(8000 characters is really a lot of words, isn't it?) he will not escape me forever-

or- I got a PhD in Biochemistry from Duke, went to California to learn cloning, came back to NC for a 5 year fellowship, and have been Lab Director at National Diagnostics for 12 years now. Along the way I met and married Kim Gernert while we were both at Duke. We have 3 joyful kids, and live in the house we both grew up in, she in Connecticut, and me in Maryland. We enjoy Atlanta, and get up to DC every year or two.

But I still think the first version is better....

Ron Frankel rigging a rubber chicken to fall from the catwalk when Mary Jane Inglesby fired her pistol in the air during Oklahoma.

Ron Frankel, who told me to create this profile. If anyone wants more information please ask him at the reunion. I wish you would. I'd like nothing better than to have Ron's reunion experience be the interminable retelling of my life story. As he sees it.
Also Cathy (Winter) Oliver, David Shykind, Pete Filipov (he may argue the point), Winnie Ho and Walter Gottlieb. Among others.