3806 Scary World

Sunday, December 1, 2013

I've been searching the internet for people I hadn't heard from or maybe thought about in ages.  It started out as plain curiosity.  Where are they now?  What are they doing?

Men are easier to find than women, because their names don't much change.

It has become scary.

So far, every man I've been able to locate whom I had ever dated before Jay died --- is dead, with the sole exception of Ex#2.  (And him, I don't understand how he's still alive.)

I'm beginning to feel somehow responsible.

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Things got weird in another area, too.  I have written in the past about a friend from work and also from Mensa.  I'm the first she called when her husband died, and I helped her through all the messy legal and emotional details that entailed.  She was so grateful she said she would put my favorite charities in her will, donations to be made in my name.  I gave her brain tumor research and doctors without borders.  By the way, she is fabulously wealthy.  We're talking original Picassos and Miros on her walls.  She has no family except a grand-niece somewhere.

She'd always been a drinker, and after her husband died she started drinking heavily.  She started calling friends in our group at 3 and 4 am to chat.  You'd explain to her that you were sleeping and had to get up in the morning, so, uh, goodnight, and hang up on her.  She was hard of hearing and tended to talk right over you, so ... the phone would ring again, "We got cut off!"  That would go on and on all night.  If you didn't turn the phone off it began to sound like an alarm clock.

Our friendship ended when she went to a Mensa party that was supposed to start at 7 pm, and showed up already hammered at the hostess' house at 7 am, oops, and then just stayed, drinking the whole time.  At the end of the evening no one wanted her to drive home, but she fought anyone who tried to take her keys and the hostess had had it with her and refused to keep her overnight.  So I volunteered (without her knowledge or permission) to follow her, to make sure she made it home.

I think my being a discreet distance behind her infuriated her, and kept her alert and on the road.

When I got home I found several messages on my machine, and then the phone rang again and it was her.  She was furious that I'd had the nerve to follow her home.  To treat her like she was incapable.  She yelled at me a while, and then hung up.

I don't think she ever went to another Mensa event, and at any rate, never spoke to me again unless it was the wee hours of the morning and she was too drunk to remember she was mad at me.

Then I moved to New Jersey.

About two years ago I got an email from a mutual friend.  He told me that she had asked for my phone number.  She had apparently tried to call the country house and the phone had been disconnected.  He said he figured he should check with me first.  "Is she still calling people in the middle of the night?"  "Yep."  "Thanks for asking first.  No, don't give her my new number.  Tell her you simply don't have it or can't find it."

And that was the end of that.

Well, last week I got to wondering about her.  She's only maybe two years older than I, but she has always been in poor health, has some kind of balance problems and falls a lot even when she'd been sober, and now with the drinking...  So I searched the internet.  She's still alive.  Ok, end of thought.

Until yesterday.

 I got an email from her.

A strange email, to the account I rarely use anymore.  She even sounds sort of sober...

except

...the Subject line says: "Hey, are you still out there?  Let me know.  The reason I am writing (besides just wanting to reconnect) is that some time ago I told you that I wanted..."

The body of the email, the text part, is completely blank.  She apparently wrote the entire note on the subject line, which, of course, got cut.  (Sheesh.  How do you even do that?)

Oh, cripes.

I thought about it most of yesterday and today.  It's ten years since her husband died and she wrote the new will, so I suspect her lawyer has told her it's time to review it, and maybe she wants to check my choice of charities.  I don't know.  I'd have to respond to her to find out what she wants to say.

I am torn.  I feel like the right thing to do is to respond.
BUT I DON'T WANT TO!!!!!!
I do not want to reconnect!
I'd rather she just thought I am lost.
But that's a bad thing to do, to hide from her like that.
It's a moral dilemma.
I do still feel some pity for her --- she's so alone.
She has no interests, no activities, no family.
But I need to protect myself from the suction of her life.

I asked Daughter, who tends to be one of those maddeningly black or white people, and she said I have no obligation to respond.  The woman cut me off a long time ago when I had been perhaps her best friend, and I can leave it at that.  She chose that loss, that path.  My only loss might be some large contributions to charity, maybe, if that's what the note was about.  So I can choose to not respond without guilt.

So, what do you think?
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2295 Sexting (I hate that word!)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The plumber came by. He's going to put a new silt filter in on Friday, in a more accessible spot. Another $300.

Why do people feel like they have to make up new words? "Sexting" = sending text messages with sexual content. It's not just sending text, though. It includes emailing and posting on the internet.

The Massachusetts Berkshire County DA has decided to get tough with teens (and anyone else) who sends, receives, or forwards photos or messages with sexual content involving minors. The kids are taking explicit photos of themselves or others and passing them around, or posting them on social sites like Facebook, and he's threatening to charge them with kiddy porn. Very good story here, the official DA site, with (what I find to be) shocking statistics.

A lot of people are blaming the technology for the rash of topless teens out there.

It's not the technology to be blamed. It's worse. It's a whole social atmosphere of "anything goes", and "why not". It's ordinary street clothes that look like lingerie. Office attire that flashes parts of the body normally kept private. It's expectations out of control, expectations expecting to be met.

It's not the technology. Victorians sketched. It's what one did. And it was not unusual for a young man finding himself alone with a woman and a sketch pad and a pencil to ask her if she'd be willing to take off her top for art. And the young lady would raise her eyebrows, laugh at him, and keep her top on. Hey, it didn't hurt to ask.

When I was in high school and college, every so often a guy would get hold of a Polaroid camera, and he'd ask, beg, hopping from one foot to another in anxiety, and the girl would raise her eyebrows, laugh at him, and keep her top on. Hey, it didn't hurt to ask.

Now the girls often are taking the photos themselves. Nobody has to ask.

There's something very wrong with their thinking.

I blame Madonna, and all those who followed in her footsteps.
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1249 Mind and Morality

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

At http://wjh1.wjh.harvard.edu/~moral/index.html, you can take a test on moral choices. Be careful not to add possibilities to the descriptions, like "Well, I could call 911." You have to go with the situation exactly as described.

Taking that first test opens the portal to a flock of other tests you can choose.

My taking the tests and examining the results helped to explain to me why I find most other people to be too judgemental, too ready to punish mere thoughts, and too ready to ascribe "bad" thoughts and motives to others.

Because they mostly do.

Have fun. (You probably will not get the same questions I did.)

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Not really related to the above, a separate thought engendered by the court case on TV at the moment:

I am always amazed when someone is accused of something heinous, and friends and relatives respond to the charges with, "Oh, that's impossible. I know her, and she couldn't possibly do anything like that! She's such a nice person!" And they rally 'round, and defend, and raise money for defense, and spit vitriol and throw rocks at the accusers, and accuse them of lying - all based on their belief that the accusation doesn't fit with what they know of the person.

"I know she didn't do it because I know her and I know she couldn't have done it."

Bullpoopy.

Unless they witnessed the actual act, and saw someone else do it, they don't really know! Everyone has parts to them that no one knows. It always pisses me off when people act like they know another that well, because they don't. We mostly don't even know ourselves that well. It bugs me when people ignore facts in favor of loyalty.

It works the other way, too - when someone suggests that someone else could have done something nasty, and another says, "Oh, yes, I know her and she's quite capable of it", and next thing you know, she did do it, regardless of the lack of any evidence that anything of the kind had ever actually happened!

I don't understand either bunch. I don't understand why it's so difficult to reserve judgement until the facts are in. I'll decide something is likely or unlikely, but not with the passionate sureness of those others.

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This has personal application. An old friend was recently accused of a serious crime. The friend and I had only shortly before reestablished contact - I hadn't seen or heard from him in 40 years. I knew him as a nice and thoughtful guy, and in the forty years since we had been acquainted he had established himself as a pillar of his church and community. The accusation almost destroyed his life, costing him his job just before retirement. (The charges have since been dropped, but his record has not been expunged. This will hang over him for the rest of his life.)

I reserved judgement. I actually felt guilty doing so. He's an old friend. I should stand by him, right? I should have written letters to the court praising him, shouldn't I? That's what everyone expected me to do, wanted me to do. Along with everyone else who wrote letters saying he couldn't possibly have done it because they know him as ... blah blah ... and therefore he couldn't have.

But I really truly don't know him now. I have no basis for judgement whatsoever. I was given some of the facts in the case, which seem to absolve him, but I am too aware that I don't have all the facts.

I don't know what happened, and I have no basis on which to form an opinion or take a stance, and for that, I feel guilty.

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Perhaps this all goes back to our frustration when we kids tried to tell teachers, councilors, doctors, policemen, neighbors about our father and what he did to us, and we got laughed at and pushed away and ignored, because "I know your father, and he's a nice guy. He wouldn't do that. You must have just made him mad."

Anger had nothing to do with it. And he wasn't a nice guy. Not really. He was insane.
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