Word: carneal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...place, Benjamin Strong was at the breakfast table, munching on Froot Loops and listening to his father, a preacher, read from the book of Proverbs. In his heart, however, the 17-year-old was pondering the words of a classmate. "Don't be at prayer circle on Monday," Michael Carneal had told Strong on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Carneal was a bit of a misfit at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., one who occasionally wore ill-fitting, loud-colored clothes and had a couple of disciplinary problems (browsing the Playboy Website, digging a sharp object into a wall...
...from water guns to real guns," he says. "I did play that over in my head. I thought he'd wave it around, at worst." Strong hoped his friend was just being sarcastic. He had joked back at the time, saying he would "take him" if anything bad happened. Carneal often hung about with other students in the school lobby, looking on as the prayer circle met, never joining in. And so whatever he imagined, Strong believed there "would be time to negotiate or something." Besides, Strong could not stay away from the prayer circle. He was leading...