I had a friend who was a couple of years younger than me who came to the University of Washington when I'd been there for two years. His ambition was to become an actor (he acted in his high school plays), but when he took freshman Psych, he became insufferable. And manipulative!

After hearing of Pavlov's experiments with dogs, he figured he could control people's (and my) behavior with a little "conditioning." If, in a discussion of any topic, if I had the audacity to disagree with him about something, he would punch me in the shoulder. Hard!

After he did this a few times and I figured out why he was doing it and what he was trying to accomplish by this, I warned him that there would be "consequences" if he ever did that again.

A short time later, we had a mild disagreement about something, and once again he punched me on the shoulder.

I immediately caught him in the goolies with a quick upward swing of an aluminum forearm crutch.

There must be something to Pavlovian conditioning, because with Bruce, it was a case on "one time learning." He never punched my shoulder again.

Don Firth