Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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lie • connnueo PRom g children say. He accepts life as it comes, assumes the responsibilities of a man, a husband, a father. As fal as he was concerned, Dave Myers was as much his child as the three daughters and son who followed. If Judy said it was a skin disease, that was the end of the discussion. “He never said a word,” said Judy Myers, 67, who now lives with Bill. That attitude — ignoring the obvious, believing the improbable — filtered down to David and the other children. And in a family where everyone pretended that David was a darker shade of white, race was a taboo subject. “There was no discussion. It never came up,” said Bill Myers, 66, a retired welding engineer. “We hardly ever saw a black person.” , The only blacks the Myerses saw in Stow, Ohio — a white, middle-class town outside of Cleveland — were in the papers or on the nightly news. “That was the time of the ghettos,” Bill said. “You read about the black ghetto ,on the east side of Cleveland, and the crime and the poor housing conditions.” When a young Dave Myers asked his mother why police in Alabama were spraying black civil-rights protesters with fire hoses, she told him it was because they were hot. Everything Myers saw growing up in Ohio, and then the small town of Olean in western New York, convinced him it was better to be a white boy with a skin disease than a black kid. “Why would I want to be black?” Myers said. “I saw how blacks were portrayed in the media.” As much as family members acted as though Dave was just like the other kids, they knew he wasn’t. And the difference started showing up in his ■behavior. As Dave Myers entered adolescence, the trouble started. He became defiant, hostile and sometimes threatening. At one point, Myers was sent to live with a foster family. Another time, he was kicked out of the house and lived in his car. “I was the black sheep of the family —• literally and figuratively,” he said. “I was always in the doghouse or always getting out of the doghouse.” If Dave was treated differently, it was because of his behavior, not his skin color, his mother said. “He was just uncontrollable. None of my other children acted this way,” Judy said. ® ZEUS Internet Marketing Specialist Zeus Industrial Products, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of fluoropolymer tubing for use in the medical device, aerospace, electronics, analytical, semiconductor, and environmental industries. We are seeking qualified candidates for the position of Internet Marketing Specialist. The Internet Marketing Specialist will primarily assist the Internet Marketing Manager with analyzing and determining ROI for Zeus Marketing programs. The Specialist will also be responsible for managing, designing, and developing the Zeus Web site and internal Intranet. The Internet Specialist will (on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis) gather data, compile results, and report on ROI to the management team. The Specialist will create, edit, and optimize graphics for the Web, and develop/edit HTML/ASP pages. The Specialist will design, publish, and analyze results from customer surveys. He/She will edit and publish the monthly Zeus e-mail newsletter in HTML and PDF formats. The Web Specialist will also assist as needed with the trade show preparations, direct mail campaigns, and other Marketing programs. Zeus Industrial Products, Inc., is an energetic, exciting, growing company offering competitive compensation, benefits package. Please visit our web site at www.zeusinc.com. Please send your resume and salary requirements to: Zeus Industrial Products, Inc., P.O. Box 2167, Orangeburg, SC, 29116. Attention: HR, or use or e-mail address: marketing@zeusinc.com. Our fax is 803-536-5550. No phone calls . please! EOE/M/F/D/V_ Web quizzes tackle questions surfers never thought to ask Doug lllorgul KRT CAMPUS About 2,600 years ago, the builders of the oracle shrine of Apollo at Delphi, Greece, inscribed the words “Know thyself” on the temple’s walls. To which we say, “Easier said than done, you smarty pants oracle shrine builders.” Knowing oneself is problematic. But we here at Solutions World Headquarters are all about solving problems. And we’ve discovered that the World Wide Web is a wonderful way to become better acquainted with oneself. The Internet offers all manner of Web sites devoted to self-knowledge. Many of these provide a variety of tests, evaluations, assessments and quizzes you can administer to yourself in an attempt to achieve a greater depth of understanding and insight into the workings of your own mind. One of the most comprehensive of these is www.queendom.com, which calls itself “seriously entertaining.” Its tests and assessments range from professionally developed and validated psychological tests — measuring such things as IQ, emotional IQ, self-esteem, values, communications skills and career aptitude — to “just for fun” quizzes such as the Dysfunctional Family Test, the Drama Queen Test, the Booty Call Test and the Control Freak Test. There are also memory games, word and math puzzles and trivia quizzes. Registration is free and allows access to basic tests, but a fee is charged for some of the site’s “individual premium tests.” We took a values test at this site and learned that we are highly principled and family oriented but that we lack ambition and are unlikely to advance much further up the corporate ladder. Oh well. To learn more about these test results and their significance would have cost us $9.95. The Web site www.allthetests.com offers a test entitled “Are Your Boogers Aliens?” We didn’t, have to take this particular test, because we happen to know for a fact that our boogers are aliens. Furthermore, we also know that the government is using the fillings in our teeth to broadcast radio signals to the aliens’ mothership. We did, however, take the Batman Quiz, which tests one’s knowledge of the Caped Crusader. We were embarrassed that we answered only 13 of 20 questions correctly. We were even more embarrassed that we actually took the Batman Quiz. This site also offers the opportunity to assess whether your girlfriend is more neurotic than your dog or whether your cat is more intelligent than your boyfriend. Among the scores of tests available at www.quizstop.com is one that analyzes your burping style. We learned that we fall into the category of Stealth Burper, meaning we are “well mannered and socially conscious.” The test results were also claimed that we are “savvy and dependable,” though they did not say how burping styles relate to sawiosity or uepenaaDiuty. At www.testcafe.com we discovered that our aura is magenta. We also learned that were motivated most by creativity and least by travel. Which means, perhaps, that as much as we might love that painting in the art gallery over there, we won’t cross the street to buy it. Finally, at several of the Web sites we visited in researching this story, we were informed by flashing graphic messages that we were winners of free vacations, iPods, PlayStations and laptop computers. Awesome. But then again, we scored fairly high on the gullibility test. OTHER SELF-TEST WEB SITES www.helpself.com www. quincyweb. net http://tools, monster, com/archi ves/self assessment/ - | 777-7716 Share your space, but live on your own. All furnishings pictured are from Wal-Mart. Storage WAL*MART Get everything for your dorm room at Walmart.com and still afford tuition. always low prices. ({tot# Hlralni f-t f rtm wanTKJTT.com HP Laptop Bedding