Many high school and college students are flooded with recruitment mail from various branches of the armed forces. I am a senior at Swarthmore College (certainly as unlikely a launching pad for a career in the military as Yale) and despite the fact that my PSAT scores are nothing more than faded numbers in my academic past, I am still the recipient of this peculiar military version of junk mail. I lump it in with the credit-card offers, magazine-subscription solicitations and sweepstakes announcements that commonly litter the mailboxes of those my age.

Ugelow, it seems, is not so much concerned about the tax dollars spent on his recruitment as he is amused by the supposed naivete of the military. After all, Ugelow implies in a thinly veiled subtext, only cretins enlist in the armed services, and Ugelow is no lowbrow, having, as his accompanying biography mockingly explains, "two years remaining on his four-year commitment to Yale University."

If Ugelow wishes to engage in the elitist conception of the military as nothing more than a refuge for academic non-achievers, he should do so honestly and openly without falling back on the tired ploy of feigned civic concern.

In the fall of my junior year in high school, I took the standardized Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), which most colleges use to identify potential applicants. Check the box that authorizes the testing service to release your name and the colleges hit you with a flurry of brochures, videos, applications and scholarship offers.

What I didn’t know was that the Defense Department would seize upon the scores, too. Much like their academic counterparts, the armed services pore over those scores for potential recruits. And, for some reason, the Navy’s computer decided I was a potential recruit.

For the past four years, the Navy has spent considerable time, effort and taxpayer money courting me. Only I didn’t want to be courted.

The search-and-recruit mission began innocently enough, with brochures about various Navy programs. Did I know about ROTC? Had I considered the GI Bill? Were there any other acronyms they could explain for me?

The Army and Air Force each sent me mailings from time to time, but never with the same frequency or volume as the Navy. It was not unusual to receive several Navy mailings in the same week or even the same day. Sometimes it would be the same letter but on different colored paper.

Then the calls began.

I had come home from school one day when I received a recruiting call from a Marine sergeant. He had obviously misplaced his list of a few good men and was trying me instead.

"I’m calling to talk to you about joining the Marines," he began.

"Well, I’m really not interested, but thanks," I replied and started to hang up.

But my sergeant didn’t take rejection as well as the other salesmen who call our house.

"Why is that?" he wanted to know.

I tried to explain. I get seasick. I can’t swim very well. I’m a little uneasy about making a four-year commitment at this point in my life.

"Uh, that’s a six-year commitment, son," the sergeant interrupted.

Fine, six years. I told him how antsy I was about signing up for anything where they put you in jail if you leave without permission. One acronym the Navy didn’t need to explain to me was AWOL.

Then I casually mentioned I had other plans.

"What, you planning on going to college?" he demanded. From his change in tone, it was clearly what a wimp would do.

Well, yes, I was. And if I changed my mind, I was quite confident the Navy would still be there.

I listened to the sergeant’s pitch awhile longer. When he would not allow me to end the conversation gracefully, I hung up. At least he would take me off his list, I figured. But the calls, and the mailings, continued.

By June of my senior year, most colleges had stopped sending me materials. A few brochures and applications trickled in over the summer from recruiters hopeful that I would change my mind, but most colleges had already moved on to the new crop of high school seniors. Even the Army dropped its efforts a few months into my freshman year at college.

But not the Navy. Convinced I was playing hard-to-get, the mailings poured into my house. My parents would just stack them up on my bed when I came home for vacation. We would all have a good laugh, I would throw them out, and then I would go back to school.

When I came home for the summer, the mailings and the calls continued. After receiving three identical mailings on the same day last summer, I had enough. For the first time, I called the number on the brochure. I told the operator straight out: I wanted off.

It’s not a response they get very often at the Navy Recruiting Command’s Philadelphia district office.

"You want what?" the operator asked me. "Why would you ever want to do that?"

"I have no real plans to join the Navy any time soon," I explained. "And I know it takes a lot of resources to keep sending me this stuff. As a taxpayer, I just felt that maybe the resources could be put to better use."

She transferred me to someone. He transferred me to someone else. Finally, they promised they would remove me from their list and stop sending things to my house.

Happily, I hung up. No more calls. No more mailings. And I had saved the taxpayers money.

After all, multiply the postage the Navy spent on me by the roughly 2 million high school students who graduate each year. We’re not talking small change here. Cut back on these mailings and the Navy would be a lot closer to that new Seawolf submarine it’s been clamoring for.

When I returned to school in the fall, despite the district office’s promises, the recruiting efforts continued.

Last spring, I received a call from a Marine sergeant. My mother told him what she had told all the others: I was away at school and still had no plans to sign up. She later brought in some of the mail to show to someone at her office who happens to be married to a rear admiral. The co-worker passed it on to her husband, who passed it to one of his deputies.

In June, my mother received a three-paragraph notice from the deputy commander of the Navy Recruiting Command. The commander wrote that he had verified that my name had been removed from all mailing lists of "Department of Defense advertising organizations." He then apologized to her for "any inconvenience this matter may have caused you."

Although the letter was a single sheet of paper, he sent it in an 8 1/2 by 11 envelope. The cost to the taxpayers? Forty-three cents.

It’s curious that the letter should be sent to her and not to me. It’s even more curious that it’s her inconvenience that the Navy regrets. Either way, I just hope the deputy commander really was sincere. Because he’ll soon have a chance to prove he’s a man of his word.

My younger brother, whose grades are far better than mine, takes the PSAT this fall.

—-

The packaging of the buoyant water toy says it’s from Tennessee, but the Funnoodle is really made right here in the Triangle.

So are Nerf arrows, parts of Seeley mattresses, and even the protective padding at those playgrounds McDonald’s provides for french fry-fueled youngsters.

"Those are applications that many consumers in the Triangle use and don’t know that it’s made here," said Marc Noel, the president of Nomaco Inc., a low-profile, privately held company that makes thermoplastic foam products.

With 460 employees and annual revenue approaching $55 million, Nomaco has quietly carved out a specialty niche as a leader in the "foam profile" industry.

At its plants in Zebulon and Youngsville, Nomaco melts plastic pellets, mixes in additives and coloring, and forces the concoction through a shaping device called an extruder.

What emerges are foam gardening pads, stadium cushion seats, hair curlers, race car roll-cage pads, pipe insulation, tree wraps and packing materials.

And, of course, the Funnoodle.

For those of you without young, aquatic-minded kids, the Funnoodle is a foam cylinder six feet in length and three inches in diameter that can support up to 200 pounds in water.

Typically selling for $2.99, the Funnoodle is the top-ranked non-video toy this summer, according to the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y., market-research firm. And toy stores across the country are having trouble keeping it in stock.

"It’s one of those items that just took off," said Pam Kelly, a buyer for Toys ‘R’ Us. "It’s kind of like the pet rock thing. It’s a phenomenon."

But for all the hoopla surrounding the Funnoodle, none of it has filtered down to Nomaco.

In large part, that’s by choice. Nomaco’s name never appears on its products.

The company made a strategic decision in 1987 to stop selling products directly to the public. Instead, it concentrates on its technological advantages. So it signed alliances with companies like toy maker Kid Power in Brentwood, Tenn., to market and distribute products that Nomaco makes.

"When you’re so diversified, you cannot, or we cannot, distribute directly," Noel said. "That’s why our name does not appear on the product."

Unlike many distribution agreements, there’s also a fair amount of collaboration on product development between Nomaco and its partners.

"For a manufacturer, they are very market-oriented," Kid Power President Jamie O’Rourke said.

So far, the strategy seems to be working.

When Nomaco was wooed away from Ansonia, Conn., six years ago, the company started its North Carolina operations with 30 employees in Zebulon.

Since then, it has built its Youngsville plant and now employs 350 people in the Triangle. The company has another 110 employees and two plants in an Atlanta-based decorative products division.

Nomaco’s foam sells so fast that the inventory of its 85,000-square-foot warehouse in Zebulon turns over every two weeks.

And there aren’t many competitors on the horizon.

"We find ourselves more and more in a specialty niche," Noel said.

When Kid Power approached Nomaco about manufacturing the Funnoodle, the company had first researched the different foam producers.

"In North America, there are only 10 companies that could make one of them or a number of them," O’Rourke said. "But, in my opinion, Nomaco is the only one that could make them in the volume we needed."

Still, Kid Power originally split the order between Nomaco and Toronto-based Industrial Thermo Polymer Ltd.

But once production started, the company changed its mind.

"The difference between them was night and day," O’Rourke said. "We put all our eggs in Nomaco’s basket."

Not that Noel expected any less.

"Extrusion is our forte," he said.

You’ve seen everything that’s playing at the movie theaters. There’s nothing good on TV. The clubs are too crowded, the bars too boring.

So you go bowling Friday night.

Over on lane four of the Western Lanes Bowling Center, Terence Harding and T.C. Thomas are preparing for the latest installment of a competition that’s been going on since 1986. The stakes are bragging rights and an occasional "beer frame." They come to the bowling alley about twice a month.

"All of the bowling alleys are full on Friday nights," Harding says. "This is probably the only one you can get into."

It’s 10 p.m., and about 40 people are still bowling on nine of the 24 lanes.

As the night advances, those with the youngest kids have departed. The only sounds in the alley are the satisfying thunk of ricocheting pins, the whirring of the automatic pin resetters and the occasional outburst at a bowling ball gone awry. There’s no wailing about the difficulty of fitting five fingers into three holes tonight.

Instead the alley is packed with twentysomethings, college students, teenagers, even a few families with older children. Most have stopped by after dinner, attracted by the alley’s location on Hillsborough Street, the cheap games and even cheaper beer, and the ready availability of lanes. There are no leagues at this time of night.

"We’ll usually go to a movie or a bar," Graham Donaldson, 27, says. "This is something different."

Bowling is a different way to spend a Friday night. But there’s a lot more going on here than just bowling.

Along one wall, a television shows children’s videotapes. Scattered throughout the alley are three pool tables, two pinball machines and seven video games. For the Nintendo generation who might find real bowling too, well, real, there’s even a video bowling game. It’s the one with the words "Bowling is Fun" in red and yellow letters. At the far end is the Cloud and Fire Express, also known as the C.A.F.E., a place for kids to hang out with no alcohol and no smoking allowed.

In the center of it all is Bill Goodwin, the self-described "Counter Man," who keeps an eye on the bustle. He collects fees, hands out score sheets (Western is one of the rare places where computerized scoring hasn’t taken over) and painstakingly explains the rules of bowling to a few foreign students. The change machine is broken and he’s kept busy supplying quarters for the game machines.

Goodwin works the late shift on Friday nights, from about 5 until midnight. He knows most of the regulars who come in the fall, but tonight he doesn’t see any familiar faces.

No, tonight the alley is full of people like 18-year-old Rama Moori and his friends.

"This is my first time bowling," Moori said. "And I’m leading!"

Bowl, baby, bowl.

Actually, there are few other sports where it’s possible to do so well your first time out.

There are 10 pins. One ball. Ten frames. Three hundred possible points.

Bowling is an ordinary person’s game. You don’t have to be an athlete to be good at it, although a little hand-eye coordination goes a long way.

It’s a sport unlikely to bring fame and even less likely to bring fortune. Quick, try to name a famous bowler. Hard, isn’t it?

The best-known bowlers are probably Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble who, when they weren’t hiding from Wilma and Betty at the Water Buffalo Lodge, spent their free time bowling.

For those of us who can’t manage a 90 mph fastball, dunk a basketball or throw a football in a perfect spiral, there’s something deeply satisfying about hurling a heavy object some 60 feet and watching the pins just scatter.

And there’s so much style involved.

Beginning bowlers tend to bowl in straight lines, with a sling-shot motion. But the more experienced bowlers, like Harding and Thomas, can make the ball hook and weave as they desire. It’s skill, not luck. And it shows.

Harding is brash, a showman. He’ll bowl, turn around with his arms outstretched, and smile impishly. Behind him, the ball crashes into the pins. Strike.

Thomas bowls strikes, too. But he is a graceful bowler, with a long looping motion. He bowls like he talks, with a quiet elegance. He’s Barney to Harding’s Fred.

But the best part of bowling isn’t even the bowling.

It’s the shoes.

There are precious few places where it’s acceptable, even encouraged, to wear shoes that don’t match. Short of moonlighting as a clown, bowling is probably the only chance you get to slip on such delightfully garish footwear. The red left shoe doesn’t come close to matching the tan right one and never will.

Sadly, the design of the shoes has less to do with freedom from fashion than it does with keeping the shoes from walking. So to speak.

"You’d be surprised, for college kids it’s a big hoot to walk out of here with rental shoes," Goodwin says.

The real sign of a serious bowler isn’t someone who brings his own ball. You can tell someone is in for the long run when he brings his own shoes.

Thomas has his own bowling shoes, but they haven’t done a lot to help his game, Harding teases.

Thomas does not protest. Instead he asks Harding, "How bad are you going to beat me tonight?"

Harding doesn’t answer. He just bowls.

Both are excellent bowlers and the strikes pile up. Harding finishes with 200, Thomas with 175. Harding has carried the night, as usual.

He wins at bowling and basketball and just about everything else. With one exception.

"Usually I win at horseshoes," Thomas says. "But he’s blessed with good luck."

It’s the shoes. It’s gotta be the shoes.

Decades ago and thousands of miles away, Sgt. Chuck Boyd flew the UH-1 over the jungles of Vietnam for the Army. These days he flies over the woods and forests of North Carolina for the Highway Patrol, searching for a very different enemy: marijuana.

During these summer months, the height of "drug season," Boyd and three other pilots will each spend roughly three days a week scouring the state for patches of marijuana that have been tucked away in the middle of corn fields, bean fields and just about anywhere else that water flows.

While aerial drug searches may seem to have little to do with patrolling highways, bureaucracies work in strange ways: The helicopters Boyd flies were given to the Highway Patrol. And the drug searches don’t cost North Carolina taxpayers a penny.

Because, in a curious way, they are North Carolina’s own peace dividend.

For 18 years, the Highway Patrol had a single helicopter, a blue-and-white Bell Jet Ranger that flew all the manhunts, all the high-speed chases, all the state fairs, all the stock car races and all the other events where 200,000 people or more were expected to take to the highways. Until 1986, the Highway Patrol even had to share the Jet Ranger with the state Department of Commerce.

But thanks to a great bureaucratic giveaway, it now has an entire fleet.

In the midst of base closings and budget cutbacks, the Pentagon decided it had too many helicopters. So in 1991 it decided to give away the ones it didn’t need anymore.

The surplus helicopters were awarded to law enforcement agencies across the country that promised to use them to fight drugs. The agencies were provided with federal grant money and permission to use the proceeds from the sale of drug dealers’ property to pay for the helicopters’ operation.

Over the past three years, the Highway Patrol got 10 working choppers, plus plenty of spare parts.

From as far away as Texas and from as close as Fort Bragg, the Highway Patrol assembled a new fleet of two UH-1 Hueys and eight OH-58s, the military version of its trusty old Jet Ranger. Two more UH-1s and another OH-58 were salvaged for parts.

The helicopters have been gradually repaired, refurbished and repainted. The machine guns and missiles were taken off. New landing skids, flight range-extenders and special radios that can reach any sheriff and police department in the state were added.

A flight team was culled from the Highway Patrol’s ranks to staff the additional flights.

The missions over Eastern North Carolina were given to Boyd, who had already been flying the Jet Ranger out of Raleigh. Another pilot, Sgt. Al Paterno, was chosen to fly the missions west of Greensboro from his base in Salisbury. During drug season, two part-time pilots join them.

Last year, their first year with two full-time pilots, the patrol captured 1,911 pounds of marijuana.

On days he’s flying drug missions, Boyd arrives at 7:30 a.m. at the Department of Commerce’s heliport, where the Raleigh-based helicopters are stationed until construction on the Highway Patrol’s hangar is completed.

He fills out some paperwork, checks the weather and inspects the aircraft.

These choppers are military issue, and the amenities are sparse. There’s no autopilot, no padded seats, no soundproofing. It gets so loud during flights that the pilot and the passengers have to talk over an intercom to hear each other. Some helicopters still sport military green and U.S. Army insignias. Five of the OH-58s from Fort Bragg even flew in the Persian Gulf War.

What they may lack in luxury, they make up for in precision. In the hands of a skilled pilot, Boyd says, these helicopters can land in the same tracks they took off from.

As he walks around the helicopters, Boyd checks for fuel leaks, engine burns, "foreign matter" in the intakes, and any sign that the helicopter is not fit to fly. Boyd is on call 24 hours a day, so the helicopters must always be ready.

He points to the Huey to demonstrate. It’s fully fueled. On the passenger’s seat rests his form-fitting, white flight helmet; his radio headset is nestled inside. The keys are in the ignition. From the time a call comes in, he can be in the air in less than two minutes.

When Boyd completes his inspection, he’s ready for takeoff. He’s usually in the air by 9.

He claims not to have a favorite helicopter, and when a mechanic asks on a recent day, "Which one you gonna run?" he selects the Jet Ranger.

As the mechanic lowers the hangar door, Boyd straps in and slips his flight helmet over his short crop of graying hair. He punches a few buttons along the console, flicks some switches along the ceiling.

"Clear!" he barks as he starts the rotors.

The helicopter begins to rock back and forth, with the rotors spinning so fast that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The scent of burning fuel wafts through the cabin.

Takeoff is soft. The nose dips and the helicopter accelerates upward across Tryon Road, soaring over the barbed wire fence, past the trees and emerging in the clear sky above the Highway Patrol’s training center. The engine’s whine and the rotors’ steady thumping are quickly forgotten.

"This is a helicopter," Boyd announces over the intercom.

The search for marijuana has begun.

Marijuana. Pot. Weed. Grass.

No matter what you call it, the Highway Patrol sure finds a lot of it. Over $1 million worth of plants this year alone, says Col. Robert Barefoot, the head of the Highway Patrol. Last year the Highway Patrol captured 11.1 percent of all marijuana seized in North Carolina - more than doubling the 5 percent it captured five years ago.

In his office on the second floor of the Archdale Building in downtown Raleigh, Barefoot has a framed photograph of the Huey, with $12,000 worth of marijuana draped over the tail.

When asked about the picture, he calls the helicopter "beautiful" and speaks about the machine in much the same way a fawning father would about a son or a daughter.

And why not? He has largely overseen the formation of the helicopter fleet. He hopes to eventually have enough helicopters deployed so that the Highway Patrol can reach any part of the state in less than 45 minutes.

For Barefoot, the decision to accept the helicopters was not a difficult one.

There was the cost, for one thing. While non-drug missions in the helicopters are paid for out of the Highway Patrol’s budget, just as they were when the patrol had only the Jet Ranger, the drug flights are essentially free.

"We have all these helicopters in operation at zero cost. Not a penny," he says. "We take great pride in that."

Then there are the other benefits.

Helicopters are used in searches for missing children, Alzheimer’s patients and fugitives.

They dramatically simplify high-speed highway pursuits. No automobile can outrun a Huey cruising at its top speed of 140 mph.

They ease the pressure on the National Guard, which also maintains a helicopter squad to assist in drug busts, such as the two in Durham County last week.

They improve the Highway Patrol’s relationship with sheriffs and police departments, who get to share in the glory of helicopter-led arrests.

But most importantly, they terrify North Carolina’s criminals.

"When they see this helicopter overhead, they are afraid to come out. They hunker down," Barefoot says.

"And if they do, we catch them."

The Jet Ranger has reached a cruising altitude of 300 feet and a speed of 20 to 30 mph. As Boyd turns it in a lazy loop around downtown Raleigh, you can see the depth markings on pools, the words on highway signs, the "street people’s" cabin in the woods of Tryon Hills.

From this height, a trained pilot can spot a single marijuana plant standing 14 inches or higher. The green of marijuana is a fairly distinct color. If you know what you’re looking for, that is.

Boyd has seen plants as tall as 20 feet and found fields of thousands of plants. He doesn’t like to talk about past drug busts though. Nor does Sgt. Paterno, the other full-time pilot.

Paterno explains that he’s often harassed by those he busts. Bragging about his adventures would just make it worse.

He’s already gotten so many nasty calls at home that he’s had to change his number. Someone damaged his car’s paint job with a key. Bags of trash have been thrown into his yard. His mail box has been blown up repeatedly.

It takes a certain resiliency to be a helicopter pilot.

Like the helicopters he flies, Boyd spent considerable time in the military before joining the Highway Patrol.

When the Vietnam War broke out, Boyd enlisted in the Army and signed up for the Warrant Officer Flight Program. It was the only way he could fly in the war without a college degree.

Boyd flew Hueys and other helicopters during two tours of duty in Vietnam and served as a flight instructor at the Army’s helicopter school in between.

When his enlistment in the Army was up in 1971, he decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, who had served on the Highway Patrol for 39 years and had retired the previous year.

Boyd spent the first 15 years working the road, the last nine in the air. Although he had occasionally flown Hueys in the National Guard, he never expected to fly them day in and day out again.

"It was like putting on an old glove. It felt like I had never been out of it," he said. "Once you get enough flight time, the aircraft becomes part of you."

And he gets plenty of flight time. He searches for drugs for six to eight hours a day, stopping every two hours to refuel. He has a computer on board that uses satellites to calculate his position and then gives him a list of the 15 closest airports.

He pays for the fuel with credit cards.

In a clump of woods between the Farmers Market and N.C. State’s Centennial Campus, Boyd spots a few plants of marijuana, hidden by some trees. He pulls the Jet Ranger into a tight circle, craning for a better look.

Like most of his finds, it appears to be a personal stash.

"This is what flying for marijuana is about," Boyd says. "You can find it anywhere, the middle of town, someone’s back yard. Just about everywhere I go, I’m looking at the ground."

When he spots marijuana, he punches a button on his computer that records the coordinates. Sometimes, if there’s a place to land, he or another patrolman will go down and retrieve the marijuana. If there’s not, like today, he will call the land owner and have it destroyed. If they find a lot, planning for a bust begins.

"No one plants it on their own land," he explains. "They always go on someone else’s land and plant it."

Boyd circles a few more times, trying to discern a path in the trees that leads to the marijuana. He can’t make one out. He decides to return home.

When he sets the helicopter down, Boyd indeed lands within five inches of the tracks he had taken off from. He could have landed in the tracks, he insists, but chose not to.

"I meant to do that," he says. "Otherwise, it kills the grass.

But while they’re lowering their prices, some Triangle store owners aren’t even sure whether they will survive the competition.

Consumer electronics chain Best Buy opened its first Triangle store in Raleigh’s Pleasant Valley

Promenade on June 16 and will open its second in Durham’s New Hope Commons in October. It will sell CDs at or below cost as a way of luring shoppers into its store. Circuit City will match the promotion, as it has in other markets where the two compete.

The archrivals hope that a discount of a few dollars on CDs will lure customers and spur sales of stereos, televisions and VCRs.

Consumers across the Triangle are already seeing a savings of about $3 a disc at the electronics chains and at some record stores that are slashing prices to stay competitive.

Nationally, while chains like Sam Goody/Musicland and Blockbuster Music have survived the Best Buy blow, the competition has claimed a number of casualties among regional chains and independent stores.

"It’s big business putting little business out of business," said Don Kulak, executive director of the Independent Music Retailers Association.

In markets where it competes with Circuit City, Best Buy is charging $10.99 for new releases and best-sellers and no more than $12.99 on most other CDs, according to a Billboard magazine survey.

Even before the Minneapolis-based Best Buy opened its Raleigh store, Triangle stores had started to react.

The Schoolkids Records chain in Raleigh and Cary lowered prices on its top 25 best-selling albums to $10.99 about two months ago. Current titles at that price include Hootie and the Blowfish’s "Cracked Rear View," "Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin," and Fugazi’s "Big Red Medicine."

"We would have sold the same titles for $13.99 before," said John Hornaday, manager of the Hillsborough Street store. "That was kind of brought on by Best Buy."

At Durham’s CD Superstore, manager Jeff Hill says his store will match or beat Best Buy’s prices for its discount savings club members. But he expects shoppers who are already in the club to stay in it.

"I just don’t see it affecting us too much because we already have a clientele," Hill said. "We beat the mall prices already."

While managers at other area stores said they were still

discussing an appropriate response, awaiting word from a corporate parent or unaware of Best Buy’s prices, most said their stores’ selection, service and

distance from Best Buy would determine how much they are affected.

"I’m quite sure I’m going to lose customers but I’ll gain some too," said Ronald Winslow, manager of Willies Records and Tapes in Raleigh, who is counting on his store’s strength in harder-to-find music. "We’re more into urban music than they are. I welcome the competition."

Waves Music in the Cary Towne Center has no plans to change

its prices, even though they are $2 to $3 higher than Best Buy’s, assistant manager Craig Hilton said.

"We’re in the mall here, and we get a different crowd then they do," Hilton said. "It was a big deal at first, but we’re not really worried about it."

Jack Campbell, owner of Poindexter’s Records in Durham, said he will not change his prices but will count on his special selection of independent rock to counter the competition. He says the Triangle’s more traditional record stores will duke it out with Best Buy.

"It’s really going to affect CD Superstore, Camelot, Blockbuster and the other mass merchandisers," Campbell says. "We really cater to a different customer.

We try to concentrate on carrying labels that no one else carries."

At $10.99 a CD, he says, "I know enough about the music business that for CD Superstore and Blockbuster Music, it’s not enough profit to keep going."

For those mass merchandisers, there is not much room to maneuver. The price you pay for your favorite disc is largely determined by six major distributors that supply almost all CDs sold across the country. Owned by or affiliated with major record labels, distributors sell CDs to retailers for about $10.75 and typically suggest that stores sell them for about $18.

Since Best Buy started cutting prices in 1989, profit margins have been too narrow for some retailers in other cities who have tried to compete.

The competition from Best Buy’s first North Carolina store in Charlotte was enough to force independent store Sounds Familiar into bankruptcy last year.

Last month the CD discount war claimed its largest casualty yet in Kemp Mill Music, a 25-store chain based in the Washington, D.C., area, which declared bankruptcy.

"It’s the dark side of capitalism," said Leslie Robbins, manager of Raleigh’s Nice Price Books. "It’s great to have cheap CDs but it [hurts] independent stores. I hope it will make people realize it’s worth that extra $2 to shop at those stores."

"Here it is. I want it," the 3-year-old girl announced in delight.

"Maybe we’ll get it when it is closer to your birthday," her father said.

"But I want it now!" insisted Sarah, who will turn 4 on Friday, the same day that "Pocahontas," Walt Disney’s latest animated movie, opens nationwide.

Like Sarah, children across the Triangle have discovered the Pocahontas merchandise that has been flowing into stores since the beginning of this month. Like David Chappell, weary parents have discovered how hard it is to withstand movie studios’ big-budget marketing campaigns as their children clamor for the Next Big Thing.

This summer, parents will have a particularly difficult time as Disney’s "Pocahontas" and Warner Bros.’ "Batman Forever" compete for their children’s hearts, minds and purchasing power.

The studios have thrown the full brunt of their marketing muscle behind the movies. Both are hawking merchandise through their in-house stores. Warner Bros. signed up McDonald’s for a "Batman Forever" promotion; Disney has a similar arrangement with Burger King.

While Batman merchandise is targeted primarily at boys and Pocahontas at girls, the two are competing for shelf and display space at toy stores, book stores, department stores and music stores.

In connection with "Batman Forever," which opened June 16, toy companies are selling five different lines of Batman action figures. For those of you keeping score at home, there’s "Batman Forever," "Batman" the animated series, "Batman Returns," "Legends of Batman" and "Mask of the Phantasm" from the animated movie.

From the new "Batman Forever" line alone, there’s "Manta Ray Batman," "Night Hunter Batman," "Transforming Bruce Wayne Batman," and… well, you get the idea. You can also buy the Batmobile, the Batcopter, the Batcycle and the Batplane. As always, kids are encouraged to collect them all.

The action figures start at $5.99; figures with vehicles at $14.99.

But while Batman may be forever, Pocahontas is a girl’s best friend.

If you thought your child’s craving for "Lion King" paraphernalia was bad, brace yourself. You haven’t seen anything yet. Here’s a small sample of what’s already in stores:

Pocahontas storybooks, songbooks, coloring books, coffee table books. Posters for kids to color and posters that have already been colored. Rubber stamp kits, sand art kits, stationary kits. Dresses, jackets, bracelets, backpacks. Necklaces, nightgowns, mugs and moccasins. The items range in price from a few dollars to $28.

The priciest Pocahontas item is a $248 pigskin leather jacket for adults at The Disney Store. But the hottest-selling is the $16.99 "Sun Colors Pocahontas" doll, which some stores say they have had trouble keeping in stock.

"I’m carrying similar stuff to what I did for ‘Lion King,’ " said Katherine Glascock, the manager of Toy Terminal in Raleigh. "If that’s any forecast, the Pocahontas mugs, stamps and stuffed animals will be real popular."

Their popularity will be no accident. Friday’s opening is the culmination of Disney’s carefully crafted marketing campaign.

Two weekends ago, Disney held a free "Pocahontas" premiere for 100,000 people in New York City’s Central Park. The company has also dispatched Pocahontas animators and an interactive exhibit on a 24-city tour. Disney Stores crank out songs from the soundtrack several times an hour. In addition, every copy of the "Lion King" video included a "Pocahontas" preview.

"Everybody in the world probably has the ‘Lion King’ video," said John Lamiell, a self-described Disney-ite from Sacramento visiting the Triangle. Yes, he owns one of the 26 million copies of the "Lion King" sold so far.

Since last year Disney has aggressively licensed rights to produce Pocahontas merchandise. Burger King alone will distribute 55 million Pocahontas figurines. Stores of all kinds have set up Pocahontas displays, all hoping for a piece of the Disney marketing magic.

"I think it’s great that kids have this to look forward to," David Chappell said. "What I don’t appreciate is how a lot of stores put these advertising displays out in the open, at kid level."

Analysts say Disney could make between $700 million and $900 million in profits from the movie.

Disney has done its marketing so well that other toy companies are seeking to cash in on the Pocahontas craze too.

There’s "Li’l Indian Princess," a palm-sized doll. Or the larger "Native American Doll." Or the "Native American Princess Play Wear Dress and Fun Set," which includes barrette, bracelet and shoulder pouch.

Even Mattel, one of the largest producers of Pocahontas toys, is cross marketing. Prominently displayed in some Triangle stores is its "Native American Barbie." For a mere $149.99, you can purchase a version of the doll that’s almost as tall as your child.

At least that’s an easy one for a parent to say no to. Birthday parties are much harder. Just ask David Chappell whether Sarah will have a Pocahontas birthday party. He pauses and then smiles.

"Probably," he admitted.

Rose, a 34-year-old homeless man, will appear in court today on armed robbery charges. Police say Rose took $19.31 from a Raleigh lawyer at a South Blount Street gas station on the night of May 24.

The weapon?

Not a gun. Not a knife. Not even a broken beer bottle.

Out of either extraordinary gumption or extraordinary stupidity, Rose is alleged to have sneaked behind the 65-year-old man and held him up with a beige office stapler.

The tactic ultimately failed when an off-duty Highway Patrol officer who happened to be filling his own tank chased Rose down. Rose now faces charges for "robbery with a dangerous weapon."

That’s what you get for committing a crime with office supplies.

It happens more often than you might think. A surprising amount of crime is committed each year with office supplies. And as in Rose’s case, not just the white-collar variety either.

Across the nation, staplers have been used in at least one murder, one attempted murder, three armed robberies, a police beating of a suspect and a prison uprising since 1981.

They have also been used at least once in self-defense. A Pittsburgh woman foiled a robber at her dry-cleaning store in 1988 by repeatedly beating him over the head with a stapler.

In many respects, office supplies are the perfect tools of crime. There are no licenses required and no waiting periods. They’re readily available and nearly impossible to trace. Office supplies are cheap and, in many cases, free: Everything you need is probably available at your workplace. And there are so many different office supplies for criminals to choose from.

The cliched weapon is the letter opener, of course. When it comes to crime, letter openers are pretty flexible; you can use them to slash, slice, maim or murder. Maybe that’s what accounts for their use in at least five attacks nationally since 1989. Two were robberies, the other three disputes among business partners whose deals had gone sour. One was fatal.

A less-conventional criminal murdered the mayor of Clearwater, Fla., in 1989 by strangling him and then hitting him over the head with a hole punch. The suspect’s attorney explained that his client had downed two pitchers of beer and two glasses of wine the night of the murder. But when the case came to court, the jury decided his punch-drunk defense was, well, full of holes. It recommended a life sentence.

But the up-and-coming criminal office supply is the stapler. Unlike the others, it can be used as a blunt object close up or fired from a distance. Staplers are easy to conceal and, with the wide variety of colors available, easy to accessorize. Criminals, you just don’t have to clash any more.

Staplers clearly have a versatility that other office supplies lack. Maybe that’s why they are used more often in crimes than letter openers, hole punches or any other office supply.

In a January plea bargain agreement, Baton Rouge, La., prosecutors dropped armed robbery charges against 35-year-old Gerald James Joubert for robbing a hotel by holding a stapler to an employee’s neck. In return, he pleaded guilty to robbing a motel and an inn of a combined $428 by putting his finger in his pocket and pretending to have a gun. Joubert claimed he needed the money to pay a court-ordered fine for a previous drug conviction.

A Dallas 18-year-old was convicted in 1993 on charges that he murdered his grandmother with a stapler, a steering wheel "club" security device and a bottle of hot sauce. The motive? He wanted his grandmother’s Cadillac and feared he had been left out of her will.

In New York City, which GQ magazine suggests the Triangle emulate, government agencies have had orders not to leave staplers on desks or countertops for fear that angry citizens might use them to attack bureaucrats.

Well, we’re doing our best to catch up. Just think of Rose’s alleged attack as an act of civic pride.

Adler was not foiled by a test administrator noticing that the person taking the test was not the person pictured on Adler’s driver’s license. Nor was he done in by the Educational Testing Service’s analysis of his test scores for irregularities. Instead, Adler was thwarted by the one factor he should have had the most control over: himself.

If they had just kept the scheme to themselves, only Adler and co-conspirator Donald Farmer (who took the test for Adler) would have known how easy it was to bypass one of ETS’s most stringent security protocols. Instead, Adler revealed his plan to classmates, and one of them apparently alerted ETS. This tip, coupled with a question from a college admissions officer about a discrepancy between Adler’s test results and grades, ultimately led ETS to challenge his scores.

The lesson of how easy it could have been to cheat on the SAT has not been lost on college-bound and scholarship-seeking students, who know that the stakes are enormous — and they extend beyond the obvious influence on whether a student gets into a particular college. For student-athletes, NCAA rules require a minimum SAT score of 700 in order to play collegiate sports. For other students, there are millions of dollars in academic scholarships on the line as well.

To be sure, few find it necessary to craft elaborate ruses like Adler’s, but some area high school students say they have discovered how to take advantage of ETS security loopholes without getting caught. There are, in short, many ways to cheat without really trying.

In their last years of high school, students come in contact with four types of ETS examinations: the SAT; the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), a scaled-down practice version of the SAT; the Achievements, which test mastery of specific subjects on a high school level; and the Advanced Placement (AP) exams, which test mastery of specific subjects on a college level.

One method of beating the system on SATs and PSATs is to confer during the break between the math and verbal sections. Then, test-takers can go to the bathroom or get something to eat. Often, anxious students will gather in the halls and compare answers. Although students are not permitted to work on an earlier section once time has been called, a single additional correct answer can result in a 20- to 30-point increase in a score. For many, the temptation proves too great.

"People go out into the halls during the break and talk about the answers," said Sidwell Friends School senior Peter Wallace. "They go back in, and when there is no proctor around, they make changes."

For the Achievement tests, the problem of comparing answers is even worse. The one-hour Achievements can be taken in a myriad of subjects, ranging from biology to modern Hebrew. During the testing period, students can take up to three tests in almost any order they choose. In between, there is also a break in which students may leave the test room.

Thus, it is possible for students to get answers to tests that they have yet to take.

"You could arrange with a friend . . . that if you were taking, say, two Achievements and you were going to screw up the math Achievement really badly, you could have your friend take his math Achievement first. Then, he could tell you about the problems," Sidwell senior Greg Humphreys said. "I have even heard of people writing down answer lists and trading during the break."

Probably the most common form of cheating is violating the time limits by quickly finishing sections where you’re strong and going back where you’re weak, says Sidwell senior Christian Hicks. Referring to the TSWE (Test of Standard Written English, one of six SAT sections), Hicks said, "Although I have never done it . . . you can complete the TSWE in 10 minutes and use the rest of the time to finish other sections. Nobody really cares about it, and it’s downright sensible to sacrifice your performance there and improve your performance on other parts of the test."

Some tactics are more innovative.

"I know one person who had one of those little electronic dictionaries and brought it into the test room," said Sidwell’s Wallace. "He must have hidden it in his coat."

Humphreys said, "On the physics AP, you are allowed to use any kind of calculator you want, including my calculator in which I can program every single physics formula, type pages of notes or type definitions of words. I can do whatever I want. The proctors are like ‘Now clear your calculator’s memory.’ What are they going to do, go around and check it?"

So it’s easy to cheat on the most important tests of high school? ETS Division Director for College Board Programs Irving Broudy says no. Existing security measures should prevent students from such methods of cheating, he said — if proctors enforce ETS rules.

"Two million students take the SAT every year. Less than two in a thousand cases are ever questioned in any way," Broudy said. "Most students — the huge majority — take the test seriously, are honest, and follow instructions."

Broudy also said, "When we have reason to believe that there is a problem of copying, we have a way of comparing wrong answers or comparing answers in general. If one finds a pattern of responses — especially wrong answers — then there’s an indicator that something improper may have occurred. So there are lots of built-in checks."

Broudy would not say, however, whether these checks were done at random, to all students’ answer sheets or only to those whose scores had been questioned.

"We prefer not to give out specific information on procedures that might essentially provide a means by which students might want to subvert them," he said.

With two million students being tested, Broudy added, "I wouldn’t be surprised if there were rare cases where problems occurred that might not be detected. But we think that overall, the system works, and works pretty well."

Among the cases that have apparently gone undetected are those of students comparing answers.

"I have not heard that one before, to tell you the truth — I mean the use of the break," said Broudy. "But part of my job — and our job in general — when we hear comments like this is to review them and look at them and if there is sufficient evidence to reconsider our procedures."

ETS President Gregory Anrig said, however, that current security measures are reasonable because cheating is not widespread.

"If there were widespread cheating on the SAT, then one would say, ‘Well, over time the effect of this would be that the correlation between SAT scores and freshman grades would change.’ The colleges regularly do validity studies to check that. In fact, the correlation has not changed over time," he said.

"I’m not denying that there’s cheating," Anrig added. "I do say that we have procedures in place to guard against cheating and we pursue them vigorously."

Charles Deacon, dean of admissions at Georgetown University, also thinks current safeguards are adequate. "Given that . . . [cheating] can happen, there are a lot of ways that it can be identified through the admissions process. I don’t think that we would be particularly interested in them creating a Gestapo-like environment. I think that would be going overboard."

But available data — and the testimony of students themselves — paint a less optimistic picture. According to recent surveys done by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina Del Rey, Calif., three out of five high school students and one in three college students admitted to cheating at least once on an exam — though the survey does not single out the College Boards. As reported by The Washington Post’s Richard Morin, "American kids are lying, cheating and stealing in what some researchers fear are unprecedented numbers."

"I can tell you from experience at Churchill," said Churchill senior Ivan Snyder, "it’s all over the place. Not hard-core cheating, substituting, Larry Adler-type cheating, but going back in sections and talking about it during the break. Even when I took the exam, I heard people talking about the test, telling people what was coming up . . . . Both times I took the SAT, I saw it. I was sort of shocked because I thought, ‘You know, this is the SAT. This doesn’t happen.’"

Many scholarship competitions, such as the National Merit Scholarship Competition, rely heavily upon a student’s standardized test scores. In the National Merit competition, for instance, semifinalists are selected solely upon their PSAT scores. While they may not actually receive a scholarship from the competition, semifinalist status helps students in many other ways.

"That is a very valuable scholarship and is one of the most prestigious scholarships in the country," said Cinthia Schuman, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest). "It opens up many doors — both financially and in terms of the schools that you can choose from — in terms of educational opportunities. The fact is that it is wrong to place so much emphasis on the PSAT, with all of its flaws. Students recognize that there is a game-like aura to the test because it doesn’t reflect the kind of skills they actually need in college, like reading, research and writing."

A National Merit Scholarship Corporation spokeswoman declined to comment, referring all questions about test security to ETS.

Because of standardized tests’ tremendous importance, some students argue that ETS should take a more active role in combating cheating. "What they should do is they should have two separate sheets, one for math and one for verbal, and pick up the verbal one in between breaks," suggested Sidwell senior Paul Hodgdon. "That way you can’t go back and change your answers. Or have more proctors, because Sidwell has two during the PSATs. For 100 people, that just doesn’t work."

Anrig warns, however, that while such measures might crack down on cheating, they would punish honest test-takers as well.

"I don’t believe you should treat all 1.6 million kids that take some form of the admission testing program as if they’re wrong-doers," Anrig said. "One could have procedures that would be sure to guard against any possible eventuality," he said, but that would mean treating the test-taker "not as a student who deserves to be treated properly, but as a prisoner in a correctional facility."

Bernard Noe, Sidwell’s Upper School principal, said, "If in fact — and there really is no hard evidence . . .cheating is widespread, that’s a sad statement about our students’ culture. It’s sad for the future that if you are willing to cheat on your SATs, you’re probably willing to cheat on your taxes or anything else that can be justified as beating the system. I hope to God that we are not teaching young values this way."