Saturday, October 08, 2005
Why I love Wheat Thins
Yeah, they're tasty and crunchy, and you can kid yourself that you're getting some nutrition from them, but I've got a great memory that makes them extra-special:
One of my mother's many inconsistencies was her constant complaining that we were being "cheated" because every package of chips and crackers was only half full when it was opened, coupled with her habit of showing up 30 seconds after I'd opened one of those same packages and declaring that I'd eaten half the bag/box... and no amount of pointing out the awareness she normally had that they were never filled more than halfway to begin with ever cut any ice, because she'd deny she believed that when *I* had opened the bag, as if only SHE would be "cheated" by opening packages to find them half-full.
I finally got her, though: Her brother was visiting us, and he and I were downstairs alone when I went to get a box of Wheat Thins; I sat at the table with them, showed him the box, and predicted, "When my mother comes down here, she's going to claim I ate half the box... luckily, you'll be able to tell her otherwise." I made sure that he'd verified that the box was sealed, opened it in front of him, withdrew one cracker, said, "That's ONE," took another cracker, said, "That's TWO," took out a 3rd, said "That's THREE"... and here she came, right on cue. As always when she saw me eating, she dashed over, snatched up the box, looked into it, and accused:
Her: "You ate half a box of crackers!!"
Me: "No, I've had THREE crackers."
Her: "That's impossible, there's only half a box left."
Me: "As always, the box was only half full when it was opened."
Her: "No, YOU ate half a box of crackers."
Me (to uncle): "How many crackers did I have?"
Him (looking embarrassed for her): "She's only had 3 crackers."
Her: "That's jut the ones you saw her eat."
Him (REALLY embarrassed for her): "I watched her open a new box, and she counted every cracker she ate-she had THREE."
Her: "That can't be, there's only half a box left!!"
And she ran from the room, preventing her having to hear any further commentary on the topic.
For many years after that, every time she tried to play the "you ate half a box" game, I'd smugly remind her that her own brother had verified that she was falsely accusing me of having eaten half of newly-opened packages... and when she denied it, as she often did, I'd reply that I was sure HE remembered, and sweetly offer to call him for her and ask him to describe the incident to her-that always shut her up, hehehehehe.
I'm not that big on crackers, but I'll always make an exception for Wheat Thins.
One of my mother's many inconsistencies was her constant complaining that we were being "cheated" because every package of chips and crackers was only half full when it was opened, coupled with her habit of showing up 30 seconds after I'd opened one of those same packages and declaring that I'd eaten half the bag/box... and no amount of pointing out the awareness she normally had that they were never filled more than halfway to begin with ever cut any ice, because she'd deny she believed that when *I* had opened the bag, as if only SHE would be "cheated" by opening packages to find them half-full.
I finally got her, though: Her brother was visiting us, and he and I were downstairs alone when I went to get a box of Wheat Thins; I sat at the table with them, showed him the box, and predicted, "When my mother comes down here, she's going to claim I ate half the box... luckily, you'll be able to tell her otherwise." I made sure that he'd verified that the box was sealed, opened it in front of him, withdrew one cracker, said, "That's ONE," took another cracker, said, "That's TWO," took out a 3rd, said "That's THREE"... and here she came, right on cue. As always when she saw me eating, she dashed over, snatched up the box, looked into it, and accused:
Her: "You ate half a box of crackers!!"
Me: "No, I've had THREE crackers."
Her: "That's impossible, there's only half a box left."
Me: "As always, the box was only half full when it was opened."
Her: "No, YOU ate half a box of crackers."
Me (to uncle): "How many crackers did I have?"
Him (looking embarrassed for her): "She's only had 3 crackers."
Her: "That's jut the ones you saw her eat."
Him (REALLY embarrassed for her): "I watched her open a new box, and she counted every cracker she ate-she had THREE."
Her: "That can't be, there's only half a box left!!"
And she ran from the room, preventing her having to hear any further commentary on the topic.
For many years after that, every time she tried to play the "you ate half a box" game, I'd smugly remind her that her own brother had verified that she was falsely accusing me of having eaten half of newly-opened packages... and when she denied it, as she often did, I'd reply that I was sure HE remembered, and sweetly offer to call him for her and ask him to describe the incident to her-that always shut her up, hehehehehe.
I'm not that big on crackers, but I'll always make an exception for Wheat Thins.
Friday, October 07, 2005
An odd version of the back at school dream
Last night, I dreamed I was back at college, which is interesting, because these dreams almost always have me back in high school; the 1st clear thing I remember was saying, or maybe it was thinking, that I'd recently graduated high school, but didn't see how that could be, because I remembered graduating many years ago, and then that I'd soon be graduating college, too, but didn't understand why, because I remembered that graduation being a done deal too... I'm not sure how I thought I'd be getting through college so quickly, but dreams have their own logic.
This is the 1st time that 1 of these dreams featured the idea of having recently graduated, so that had to mean something... and it took me embarrassingly long to realize that yesterday was the day that the man who devastated my late teens and early adulthood got the message I left for him (see my post of a couple of days ago), the day that I finally did what should have been done long ago, confront him with his evil... it's not that much of a stretch to see that as a moving forward, moving UP, that could be viewed as a graduation of sorts.
There was another totally new element to the dream; unlike when I actually went to college, when I lived at home, I apparently was going to be living in the dorms... except, you guessed it, I couldn't find my room. First, I couldn't find the stairs, then there was a long empty hallway, then there were doors whose markings didn't make sense, then I finally found a door with a 1, then 2, then 4... and naturally I was looking for 3. There were a bunch of doors with weird markings again, then an unmarked door turned out to lead to kitchen facilities, and then finally there was #3, with rods projecting near the top that had backpacks on them (I had thoughts about what degree of crowdedness and/or messiness of the room within that indicated), tapped on the door, opened it... and it was a medical facility, and people were yelling at me to close the door, because they were doing, er, medical stuff. I closed the door and wandered off to look for a different 3, the one that'd be right... I can't remember anything clearly after that.
Can it be a coincidence that these 2 new elements came at the same time? It seems impossible, and thus that the search for the dorm room has a timely meaning... but what? The search, the confusion, the importance of 3, the medical element... what does it add up to, and how does it apply? I hope I find out... and I'll be interested to see if these elements recur, and if so under what circumstances.
Anyways, this dream tells me that I interpreted the message from my subconscious in the last dream I posted about correctly; sometimes I wish it'd just send me a telegram, though...
This is the 1st time that 1 of these dreams featured the idea of having recently graduated, so that had to mean something... and it took me embarrassingly long to realize that yesterday was the day that the man who devastated my late teens and early adulthood got the message I left for him (see my post of a couple of days ago), the day that I finally did what should have been done long ago, confront him with his evil... it's not that much of a stretch to see that as a moving forward, moving UP, that could be viewed as a graduation of sorts.
There was another totally new element to the dream; unlike when I actually went to college, when I lived at home, I apparently was going to be living in the dorms... except, you guessed it, I couldn't find my room. First, I couldn't find the stairs, then there was a long empty hallway, then there were doors whose markings didn't make sense, then I finally found a door with a 1, then 2, then 4... and naturally I was looking for 3. There were a bunch of doors with weird markings again, then an unmarked door turned out to lead to kitchen facilities, and then finally there was #3, with rods projecting near the top that had backpacks on them (I had thoughts about what degree of crowdedness and/or messiness of the room within that indicated), tapped on the door, opened it... and it was a medical facility, and people were yelling at me to close the door, because they were doing, er, medical stuff. I closed the door and wandered off to look for a different 3, the one that'd be right... I can't remember anything clearly after that.
Can it be a coincidence that these 2 new elements came at the same time? It seems impossible, and thus that the search for the dorm room has a timely meaning... but what? The search, the confusion, the importance of 3, the medical element... what does it add up to, and how does it apply? I hope I find out... and I'll be interested to see if these elements recur, and if so under what circumstances.
Anyways, this dream tells me that I interpreted the message from my subconscious in the last dream I posted about correctly; sometimes I wish it'd just send me a telegram, though...
Thursday, October 06, 2005
I learned a couple of things
Did you know that with some financial institutions, you can invest by calling them up, reading them the info off of a check, and then voiding the check? I just found out about it today; doesn't it sound like voodoo? How can they act as if they got a check when they didn't get anything with a signature on it? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that it's going to be so easy to invest with this company, it just seems like a setup like that could make it a little too easy for someone with a few bits of personal info to impersonate you and mess around with your financial arrangements; my husband says there's been fraud reported for this sort of system at other places, so it's clearly doable... hopefully not with MY $, though.
The other thing I learned is what a bookmarklet is; Wikipedia defines it as "a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page"... which wouldn't have meant much to me if I hadn't found a very useful one here
http://javascript.about.com/library/blright.htm
called "Disable No Right Click Scripts"... which means it fixes the sites that give you an error box when you try to copy something, so that you can copy directly rather than working around it.
Allow me to pause here and point out the obvious; it's illegal to take people's writings, photos, artwork, or files and pass them off as your own, especially if $ is involved (ie they were trying to sell their stuff, or YOU try to).
What you CAN copy is text if you attribute it properly when you quote it, and images and other sorts of files that, as best as you can determine, are in the public domain; if someone created the stuff on their site, it usually says or implies that unmistakably, but the overwhelming majority of graphic stuff on blogs and other personal sites IS in the public domain, and was obtained for free from other sites... so why do people make such an effort to keep other folks from copying those things?
One of my many geek quirks is that I collect animated gifs; I've got thousands of them... and I've learned how to get them from pretty much any site, regardless of how they set it up. From most sites, I can download them in the usual way, or drag them to a folder or browser icon where they get "absorbed." For gifs used as background tiles, I search the source code for "background," copy the URL used in the command, and go there to get the file. The source code's also what I use to find the addresses of gifs on pages with some sort of tech deal blocking downloading, but luckily some of those will only need a click of a bookmark for me to be able to get the files now.
Some templates get clever, and the files aren't where they seem to be; with most of those, there's an html or CSS page being accessed, and if you go to that page (whose URL will be in the source code) you can get the image from it, or from ITS source code.
If the template's REALLY clever, and if the site has its own domain name, the images can be accessed by it without giving the entire URL in the code; for those, take the partial URL they give you in the command using it, and attach it to the site's URL, or the URL of the html or CSS page, or some version thereof (you may have to delete some of the end chunks of URL to get the right piece to mate with the partial URL), and that should get you to the image.
The cleverest templates of all will have a page, usually called "image" or "index," with the files listed on it, and if you can get to that page you've got it all, but 1st you've gotta get there; if you try sticking those 2 words (between /'s) onto various portions of the site or CSS URL, you've got a good chance of finding the files. If they've used a different name for that page, though, you're probably out of luck... that's one of the few situations where I'm not tech-y enough to find what I want. The other is when the source code only contains a couple of enigmatic lines; again, there's gotta be a tech way to get around that, but for now any files on that sort of site are safe from me if there's code to prevent downloading (unless they're static images, in which case I can of course do a screen capture and cut them out of it).
And what do I get for all these methods I've learned, and the time I've spent learning and applying them, assisted now by my very 1st bookmarklet? Folder after folder bursting with gifs that I periodically pick a few to look at, or send a few to a friend for a holiday or a laugh... every new thing I learn seems to make me more of a geek, lol. Anyways, if you ever see a dancing doggie gif (or whatever) that you have to have for your site, now you can almost certainly get it... and eventually, I'll show up and download it from YOU.
The other thing I learned is what a bookmarklet is; Wikipedia defines it as "a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page"... which wouldn't have meant much to me if I hadn't found a very useful one here
http://javascript.about.com/library/blright.htm
called "Disable No Right Click Scripts"... which means it fixes the sites that give you an error box when you try to copy something, so that you can copy directly rather than working around it.
Allow me to pause here and point out the obvious; it's illegal to take people's writings, photos, artwork, or files and pass them off as your own, especially if $ is involved (ie they were trying to sell their stuff, or YOU try to).
What you CAN copy is text if you attribute it properly when you quote it, and images and other sorts of files that, as best as you can determine, are in the public domain; if someone created the stuff on their site, it usually says or implies that unmistakably, but the overwhelming majority of graphic stuff on blogs and other personal sites IS in the public domain, and was obtained for free from other sites... so why do people make such an effort to keep other folks from copying those things?
One of my many geek quirks is that I collect animated gifs; I've got thousands of them... and I've learned how to get them from pretty much any site, regardless of how they set it up. From most sites, I can download them in the usual way, or drag them to a folder or browser icon where they get "absorbed." For gifs used as background tiles, I search the source code for "background," copy the URL used in the command, and go there to get the file. The source code's also what I use to find the addresses of gifs on pages with some sort of tech deal blocking downloading, but luckily some of those will only need a click of a bookmark for me to be able to get the files now.
Some templates get clever, and the files aren't where they seem to be; with most of those, there's an html or CSS page being accessed, and if you go to that page (whose URL will be in the source code) you can get the image from it, or from ITS source code.
If the template's REALLY clever, and if the site has its own domain name, the images can be accessed by it without giving the entire URL in the code; for those, take the partial URL they give you in the command using it, and attach it to the site's URL, or the URL of the html or CSS page, or some version thereof (you may have to delete some of the end chunks of URL to get the right piece to mate with the partial URL), and that should get you to the image.
The cleverest templates of all will have a page, usually called "image" or "index," with the files listed on it, and if you can get to that page you've got it all, but 1st you've gotta get there; if you try sticking those 2 words (between /'s) onto various portions of the site or CSS URL, you've got a good chance of finding the files. If they've used a different name for that page, though, you're probably out of luck... that's one of the few situations where I'm not tech-y enough to find what I want. The other is when the source code only contains a couple of enigmatic lines; again, there's gotta be a tech way to get around that, but for now any files on that sort of site are safe from me if there's code to prevent downloading (unless they're static images, in which case I can of course do a screen capture and cut them out of it).
And what do I get for all these methods I've learned, and the time I've spent learning and applying them, assisted now by my very 1st bookmarklet? Folder after folder bursting with gifs that I periodically pick a few to look at, or send a few to a friend for a holiday or a laugh... every new thing I learn seems to make me more of a geek, lol. Anyways, if you ever see a dancing doggie gif (or whatever) that you have to have for your site, now you can almost certainly get it... and eventually, I'll show up and download it from YOU.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Guided by a dream
Warning to the more tenderhearted of my readers; the content of this post concerns one of the worst incidents of my life, and if you've been previously upset by posts referring to mistreatment I endured as a child or young person, you'll want to skip this one.
When I was 16, I met a man in his late 20's who was a tennis pro at a swimming/tennis club we belonged to; he strongly resembled a celebrity I was obsessed with, and I was instantly smitten. If he'd had any moral fiber, that'd be the end of the story, but instead he took sexual advantage of the situation; I wasn't forced, tricked or seduced, though, so no tears need to be shed over this... there were only a handful of incidents, they didn't include intercourse (and most of them were just quick grope sessions), and at the time I was thrilled about it because at the point he started doing it I was fully in love with him. What keeps this from being the sort of story that women my age tell smugly about the hot older guy we snagged when we were young was that at some point someone saw something (looking back at it, it's astounding how stupid he was about the public nature of the places where he ended up with his hand in my shorts), reported it to either his wife or the management of the club... and I got back one night from a date with my boyfriend to discover that a LAWYER had called my house and told my parents to keep me away from the man who by that point had long since become the most important thing in my teenaged life.
Words can't describe my horror, my sense of betrayal, my devastation, upon learning this, so I won't even try. My parents, always quick to see anything involving me as my fault, of course demanded to know what I had done to bring this on (as the lawyer naturally hadn't said anything about that-how could he?), never grasping that there was nothing I COULD have been doing that would validly cause the 1st action to be taken to involve a lawyer; if I'd had actual human parents, rather than pod people, once they heard that sexual contact had gone on, they'd have been placing infuriated calls to the tennis pro, the club, and, since I'd been underage when it started, the police... but instead, my father decided that the 2 main pleasures of my regimented, over-controlled life, MTV and going to the club, were to be taken away FOREVER. You heard right; his response to discovering that his teenaged daughter had been sexually used, and that's what it boiled down to at that point, by a man was to do the worst things he could think of to me, given what little I had, make them permanent so that I didn't even have a light at the end of the tunnel to shoot for when my life would return to semi-normal, and never, at any time, take any action against the actual wrongdoer.
Thus began the suicidal phase of my life.
My mother eventually confided the situation to her brother, who's a shrink, and he persuaded her that I needed to get right into therapy; the woman he found for me to go to was wonderful, and not only saved my life but eventually shamed my parents, over the year and a half I saw her (she spoke regularly to them as well), into dropping some of the insane restrictions that I'd lived under my entire life... however, even while I was actively attempting suicide, she was never able to persuade my father to retract, or even reduce, his punishments, although she made it repeatedly clear that whether or not I LIVED hinged in part on my life having some shred of joy in it.
Fast-forward to the present; it's been many years since I had any pain from any aspect of the incident, and I hadn't thought of the tennis pro in ages... and then last night, I dreamed about him. It was mostly surreal and confused, but one thing I remember very clearly; I said to him, "I need to settle things between us before I turn 40." When I awoke, it was with the understanding that I'd been sent a message from my subconscious that, although I wasn't aware of any feelings of things being UNsettled, I had no intention of ignoring.
The tennis pro has an unusual name; Google led me to, eerily enough, a blog that mentioned that name, and tennis lessons, and the city we live in, and I knew I'd found him... and his name was a link, so I clicked it. He's selling real estate in addition to giving lessons these days, and I was sent to the site for the office he's associated with... and there was his picture. He's past 50 now, the dark tan and shaggy blond curls are gone, but I'd recognize that "I'm in the sun all day but never wear sunglasses" squint even if he'd had plastic surgery; he looks different enough that I could have passed him on the street without noticing him, but it WAS him.
There was an email address for him; it was a company addy, though, not a private one, and emailing would give him a line back to me, so I dismissed that option.
I looked at the phone #'s... and then did a search for his home #, which I found; amazingly, he's still married to the same woman (yes, he was married in those long-ago days, can you believe it?), and of course I therefore couldn't use his home #, as SHE doesn't deserve to get sucked into this.
His cell phone # was on the website, but the thought of him getting into a traffic accident upon hearing my voice and/or having his wife there, or even that she might have access to the phone and its voice mail, made me reject it.
I called the office # given for him, and got his personal voice mail; it was his voice, virtually unchanged after 2 decades. I hung up and thought about it; if I tried to confront him directly, I knew I'd be hearing a dial tone as soon as I identified myself, and I figured that what I needed to do was get an actual message said... even if he didn't listen to all of it, we'd both know it had been said, and my guess was that he WOULD listen to it, even if he panicked at first and slammed the phone down-voice mail stays around until it's deleted.
Many of these sorts of systems only give you 30 seconds to talk, and I wanted to be sure I didn't get cut off, so I came up with a little speech that I could give, speaking slowly and clearly, in under 30 seconds; because I've long since come to realize that he's a sociopath, and they quickly tune out and discount anything said with any emotion or drama, I practiced a cold, matter of fact tone, and kept my phrasing as cut and dried as possible given the subject matter. The exact words that I recorded on his voice mail are given below; his name has been changed to protect the guilty, I altered the name of the club, and I've substituted my "blog name" for my full maiden name (which I used to be totally sure he knew instantly who I was), but other than that this is what he's going to hear when he gets his voice mail:
"Hello John, this is Omni; I'm sure you remember me from 20 years ago at the XYZ Club. I want you to know that what you did to me was wrong, and turned my life into a nightmare for years afterwards due to my father's decision to blame me rather than you. You did terrible harm to an innocent child, and it will affect me for the rest of my life; I hope you've ACQUIRED enough of a sense of morality to feel deeply ashamed."
He's going to get the shock of his life, in return for the one he gave me; I'd do anything to be able to see his face when he realizes who he's hearing. It's not very likely that he DID ever acquire a sense of morality, and so unlikely that he'll feel any shame, but I'm betting that he WILL freak out from wondering what else I might be planning to do, and that every time the phone rings, or he sees that he has a message, for at least the next few weeks, he's going to get cold sweats thinking it might be me trying to talk to him directly, or to cause trouble for him.
:-)
I didn't feel any triumph, or sense of closure, or pride, or any of the other things you'd expect someone in my situation to feel, once the call had been made; I'm not wired that way, and didn't expect to feel any particular thing... this was just something my subconscious wanted me to do, something that objectively was a good thing to do, so I did it and went on with my evening, pleased at the thought of the unpleasant weeks he was going to have because of my call but otherwise not emotionally affected. I posted about it because I figured the whole story should be told somewhere (the people in my life would get too worked up over it if I discussed it with them), and in the hopes that it'll encourage a few other people, who DO need closure, to face the wrongdoers in their pasts and make them see the evil of what they did.
Chalk up 1 for the home team.
When I was 16, I met a man in his late 20's who was a tennis pro at a swimming/tennis club we belonged to; he strongly resembled a celebrity I was obsessed with, and I was instantly smitten. If he'd had any moral fiber, that'd be the end of the story, but instead he took sexual advantage of the situation; I wasn't forced, tricked or seduced, though, so no tears need to be shed over this... there were only a handful of incidents, they didn't include intercourse (and most of them were just quick grope sessions), and at the time I was thrilled about it because at the point he started doing it I was fully in love with him. What keeps this from being the sort of story that women my age tell smugly about the hot older guy we snagged when we were young was that at some point someone saw something (looking back at it, it's astounding how stupid he was about the public nature of the places where he ended up with his hand in my shorts), reported it to either his wife or the management of the club... and I got back one night from a date with my boyfriend to discover that a LAWYER had called my house and told my parents to keep me away from the man who by that point had long since become the most important thing in my teenaged life.
Words can't describe my horror, my sense of betrayal, my devastation, upon learning this, so I won't even try. My parents, always quick to see anything involving me as my fault, of course demanded to know what I had done to bring this on (as the lawyer naturally hadn't said anything about that-how could he?), never grasping that there was nothing I COULD have been doing that would validly cause the 1st action to be taken to involve a lawyer; if I'd had actual human parents, rather than pod people, once they heard that sexual contact had gone on, they'd have been placing infuriated calls to the tennis pro, the club, and, since I'd been underage when it started, the police... but instead, my father decided that the 2 main pleasures of my regimented, over-controlled life, MTV and going to the club, were to be taken away FOREVER. You heard right; his response to discovering that his teenaged daughter had been sexually used, and that's what it boiled down to at that point, by a man was to do the worst things he could think of to me, given what little I had, make them permanent so that I didn't even have a light at the end of the tunnel to shoot for when my life would return to semi-normal, and never, at any time, take any action against the actual wrongdoer.
Thus began the suicidal phase of my life.
My mother eventually confided the situation to her brother, who's a shrink, and he persuaded her that I needed to get right into therapy; the woman he found for me to go to was wonderful, and not only saved my life but eventually shamed my parents, over the year and a half I saw her (she spoke regularly to them as well), into dropping some of the insane restrictions that I'd lived under my entire life... however, even while I was actively attempting suicide, she was never able to persuade my father to retract, or even reduce, his punishments, although she made it repeatedly clear that whether or not I LIVED hinged in part on my life having some shred of joy in it.
Fast-forward to the present; it's been many years since I had any pain from any aspect of the incident, and I hadn't thought of the tennis pro in ages... and then last night, I dreamed about him. It was mostly surreal and confused, but one thing I remember very clearly; I said to him, "I need to settle things between us before I turn 40." When I awoke, it was with the understanding that I'd been sent a message from my subconscious that, although I wasn't aware of any feelings of things being UNsettled, I had no intention of ignoring.
The tennis pro has an unusual name; Google led me to, eerily enough, a blog that mentioned that name, and tennis lessons, and the city we live in, and I knew I'd found him... and his name was a link, so I clicked it. He's selling real estate in addition to giving lessons these days, and I was sent to the site for the office he's associated with... and there was his picture. He's past 50 now, the dark tan and shaggy blond curls are gone, but I'd recognize that "I'm in the sun all day but never wear sunglasses" squint even if he'd had plastic surgery; he looks different enough that I could have passed him on the street without noticing him, but it WAS him.
There was an email address for him; it was a company addy, though, not a private one, and emailing would give him a line back to me, so I dismissed that option.
I looked at the phone #'s... and then did a search for his home #, which I found; amazingly, he's still married to the same woman (yes, he was married in those long-ago days, can you believe it?), and of course I therefore couldn't use his home #, as SHE doesn't deserve to get sucked into this.
His cell phone # was on the website, but the thought of him getting into a traffic accident upon hearing my voice and/or having his wife there, or even that she might have access to the phone and its voice mail, made me reject it.
I called the office # given for him, and got his personal voice mail; it was his voice, virtually unchanged after 2 decades. I hung up and thought about it; if I tried to confront him directly, I knew I'd be hearing a dial tone as soon as I identified myself, and I figured that what I needed to do was get an actual message said... even if he didn't listen to all of it, we'd both know it had been said, and my guess was that he WOULD listen to it, even if he panicked at first and slammed the phone down-voice mail stays around until it's deleted.
Many of these sorts of systems only give you 30 seconds to talk, and I wanted to be sure I didn't get cut off, so I came up with a little speech that I could give, speaking slowly and clearly, in under 30 seconds; because I've long since come to realize that he's a sociopath, and they quickly tune out and discount anything said with any emotion or drama, I practiced a cold, matter of fact tone, and kept my phrasing as cut and dried as possible given the subject matter. The exact words that I recorded on his voice mail are given below; his name has been changed to protect the guilty, I altered the name of the club, and I've substituted my "blog name" for my full maiden name (which I used to be totally sure he knew instantly who I was), but other than that this is what he's going to hear when he gets his voice mail:
"Hello John, this is Omni; I'm sure you remember me from 20 years ago at the XYZ Club. I want you to know that what you did to me was wrong, and turned my life into a nightmare for years afterwards due to my father's decision to blame me rather than you. You did terrible harm to an innocent child, and it will affect me for the rest of my life; I hope you've ACQUIRED enough of a sense of morality to feel deeply ashamed."
He's going to get the shock of his life, in return for the one he gave me; I'd do anything to be able to see his face when he realizes who he's hearing. It's not very likely that he DID ever acquire a sense of morality, and so unlikely that he'll feel any shame, but I'm betting that he WILL freak out from wondering what else I might be planning to do, and that every time the phone rings, or he sees that he has a message, for at least the next few weeks, he's going to get cold sweats thinking it might be me trying to talk to him directly, or to cause trouble for him.
:-)
I didn't feel any triumph, or sense of closure, or pride, or any of the other things you'd expect someone in my situation to feel, once the call had been made; I'm not wired that way, and didn't expect to feel any particular thing... this was just something my subconscious wanted me to do, something that objectively was a good thing to do, so I did it and went on with my evening, pleased at the thought of the unpleasant weeks he was going to have because of my call but otherwise not emotionally affected. I posted about it because I figured the whole story should be told somewhere (the people in my life would get too worked up over it if I discussed it with them), and in the hopes that it'll encourage a few other people, who DO need closure, to face the wrongdoers in their pasts and make them see the evil of what they did.
Chalk up 1 for the home team.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Words can control your brain
Before I get to the topic of the post, I wanted to point out that yes, I installed the new sidebar doodads I mentioned yesterday; thanks to my new friend, Kelvyn, whose very funny blog is here
http://kelvynstevens.blogspot.com/
I now have a button you can click to add me to your Favorites (IE only-Firefox users can click on the little orange icon at the bottom right of your browser and add my RSS feed to your Live Bookmarks), and one to click that allows you to email my URL to a friend... and wait until you see what the subject line of the email is, lol (I'm not going to tell you-click the button to find out).
From the September 2005 issue of Discover comes a mini-article called "Finding the Right Word Odor":
"Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Apparently not. Words may very well influence how we interpret smell and other sensations."
My jaw hit the ground when I read that; it's not news that all our thought processes and emotions are influenced by the words we see and hear (the advertising industry depends on it), but who ever heard of words influencing our sense of smell?
"To test this idea, Oxford University experimental psychologist Edmund Rolls subjected a group of people to a cheesy aroma while simultaneously flashing before their eyes either the phrase 'body odor' or 'cheddar cheese.' The smellers were then asked to rate the pleasantness of the scent. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who saw the latter phrase were generally pleased with what they sniffed; the others, not so much."
*I* was surprised, since I'd never have guessed that it was possible to confuse the scent of cheese with the scent of BO under any circumstances; thanks to my husband, I'm VERY experienced with what BO smells like, and it ain't cheddar cheese.
"But the clincher came when Rolls analyzed fMRI brain images of the test subjects, which had been taken during the experiment. The scans revealed different patterns of activity in the secondary olfactory cortex-a collection of neurons that mediate pleasant sensory responses to smells and tastes. In the brains of those who liked the cheddar smell, the scans showed much more action than in the brains of those turned off by body odor. 'The word label influences how the brain actually responds in its olfactory processing areas,' says Rolls. 'We're finding that words affect how you feel because they're influencing the emotional part of the brain.' So if roses were actually called 'stinkweeds,' he says, perhaps they wouldn't be so well loved-at least not by our noses."
It just blows me away that you can say 2 words to a person and alter how their brain responds to one of the 5 senses; truth is truly stranger than fiction.
http://kelvynstevens.blogspot.com/
I now have a button you can click to add me to your Favorites (IE only-Firefox users can click on the little orange icon at the bottom right of your browser and add my RSS feed to your Live Bookmarks), and one to click that allows you to email my URL to a friend... and wait until you see what the subject line of the email is, lol (I'm not going to tell you-click the button to find out).
From the September 2005 issue of Discover comes a mini-article called "Finding the Right Word Odor":
"Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Apparently not. Words may very well influence how we interpret smell and other sensations."
My jaw hit the ground when I read that; it's not news that all our thought processes and emotions are influenced by the words we see and hear (the advertising industry depends on it), but who ever heard of words influencing our sense of smell?
"To test this idea, Oxford University experimental psychologist Edmund Rolls subjected a group of people to a cheesy aroma while simultaneously flashing before their eyes either the phrase 'body odor' or 'cheddar cheese.' The smellers were then asked to rate the pleasantness of the scent. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who saw the latter phrase were generally pleased with what they sniffed; the others, not so much."
*I* was surprised, since I'd never have guessed that it was possible to confuse the scent of cheese with the scent of BO under any circumstances; thanks to my husband, I'm VERY experienced with what BO smells like, and it ain't cheddar cheese.
"But the clincher came when Rolls analyzed fMRI brain images of the test subjects, which had been taken during the experiment. The scans revealed different patterns of activity in the secondary olfactory cortex-a collection of neurons that mediate pleasant sensory responses to smells and tastes. In the brains of those who liked the cheddar smell, the scans showed much more action than in the brains of those turned off by body odor. 'The word label influences how the brain actually responds in its olfactory processing areas,' says Rolls. 'We're finding that words affect how you feel because they're influencing the emotional part of the brain.' So if roses were actually called 'stinkweeds,' he says, perhaps they wouldn't be so well loved-at least not by our noses."
It just blows me away that you can say 2 words to a person and alter how their brain responds to one of the 5 senses; truth is truly stranger than fiction.
Monday, October 03, 2005
A heartfelt moment
Joel Osteen's sermon tonight was mostly basic stuff about how you need to treat people well, especially your family, and that how you're treated by others, and what God will give you, hinge on that... but he said one fascinating thing; that you can measure a person's spiritual maturity by how they treat people, by whether they have a gentle, caring spirit. Spiritual maturity... have you ever heard that phrase before? It was a new one on ME, and I've been turning it over in my mind; the best I can come up with is that it means that if you've progressed far enough in your spiritual development, you'll reach a level of contentment and serenity that allows you to treat people in the ideal way even if you're not having a great day, or are tired, stressed, whatever... with the ideal way being the one that makes things run most smoothly with them, which might require patience, or joking around to cheer them up, or overlooking their mistakes, etc. That might not be exactly what Osteen meant, but I bet it's close, given what I've heard in his sermons.
I gave in to doing a tiny blog tweak today; I saw a nicer Bloglines button, so I switched to it. However, I did manage to resist the temptation to install a couple of new doodads that I found; I have the site they're on bookmarked, and I've given some thought to placement, but I managed not to start the actual installation process, which is a big step forward... I sound like an addict, lol, but there's no harm to adding stuff to a blog, it's jut that it always takes so much more time than I imagined, so I've gotta save it for days when I have a little spare time, which was NOT today.
And now for the heartfelt moment; I was coming back from a bathroom break, and I saw that the male possum had shown up for the 1st feeding of the night, and gotten close enough to the sliding glass door that he'd see me if I walked into the room, which would scare him, so I detoured into the kitchen to watch him. When he finished the trek across the patio, he did something I'd never seen him do before; he went all the way up to the screen, looked into the family room, and slowly panned his little head around... as clear an example of looking for something as I've ever seen. I exclaimed to my husband, who was also watching from the kitchen, "He's looking for ME!!"; his reply was, "I'm usually pretty skeptical about interpretations of animal behavior, but even I can't have any doubt here-he WAS looking for you." Keep in mind, this possum is a wild animal, NOT a pet, and has never been handled or hand-fed, so to realize that he'd care enough about my absence to look around for me, based solely on the many hours I've spent crooning lovingly to him, was really a wonderful feeling... I AM making a connection with him.
Isn't it amazing how the smallest, simplest things can sometimes create the most happiness?
I gave in to doing a tiny blog tweak today; I saw a nicer Bloglines button, so I switched to it. However, I did manage to resist the temptation to install a couple of new doodads that I found; I have the site they're on bookmarked, and I've given some thought to placement, but I managed not to start the actual installation process, which is a big step forward... I sound like an addict, lol, but there's no harm to adding stuff to a blog, it's jut that it always takes so much more time than I imagined, so I've gotta save it for days when I have a little spare time, which was NOT today.
And now for the heartfelt moment; I was coming back from a bathroom break, and I saw that the male possum had shown up for the 1st feeding of the night, and gotten close enough to the sliding glass door that he'd see me if I walked into the room, which would scare him, so I detoured into the kitchen to watch him. When he finished the trek across the patio, he did something I'd never seen him do before; he went all the way up to the screen, looked into the family room, and slowly panned his little head around... as clear an example of looking for something as I've ever seen. I exclaimed to my husband, who was also watching from the kitchen, "He's looking for ME!!"; his reply was, "I'm usually pretty skeptical about interpretations of animal behavior, but even I can't have any doubt here-he WAS looking for you." Keep in mind, this possum is a wild animal, NOT a pet, and has never been handled or hand-fed, so to realize that he'd care enough about my absence to look around for me, based solely on the many hours I've spent crooning lovingly to him, was really a wonderful feeling... I AM making a connection with him.
Isn't it amazing how the smallest, simplest things can sometimes create the most happiness?
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Strange things kids do
If you're in a house with kids old enough to walk, and the phone or doorbell rings, what happens? They all, from the tiniest toddler to the biggest teen, go sprinting for the phone/door, usually shouting "I'll get it!!" WHY? What's the joy of picking up a phone or opening a door? What makes doing that basic task so exciting that kids'll drop whatever they're up to and run, even compete, to be able to do it? I never in my entire childhood had the slightest desire to do ANY task that wasn't required of me, much less had any passion to do it... and that's what handling people on the phone and at the door is, a TASK, so I never did either unless told to do so. The rationale behind the thrill kids get from this one will forever remain a mystery, I guess.
Then, there's one that I DID do with the same pleasure as other kids; making forts. Not making houses, which would go along with playing house, or tents, which is what they mostly looked like, or even castles, which would go along with the fantasy play inspired by fairy tales and Disney, but FORTS; since none of us had ever SEEN a fort, or ever been to a fort, and we weren't playing any sort of game that fit in with the concept (ie war games or cowboys and Indians) why was every shaky construction of pillows and blankets that we made and inexplicably enjoyed crouching in called a fort?
I don't know how much creative play kids engage in today, with the availability of so many kinds of electronic entertainment, but in my day it was still clear that kids can make up, and really get into, games that objectively don't seem enjoyable; I remember one that the kids in my neighborhood never tired of, called "You Dumb Animals," in which whoever was "it" would lay on the ground pretending to be asleep, and the other kids would crawl towards that person as quietly as possible, until they "woke up" and chased the "animals" all the way back to whatever their safe place was, whacking them right and left and yelling, you guessed it, "You dumb animals!!" I'm a little vague on the finer points, 30 years later, but I think the one who was "it" wanted to let the "animals" get as close as possible before "waking up," so as to have more time to chase and whack, but that if one of the "animals" got close enough to grab the sleeper, they became "it." Where did we ever get the idea for such a bizarre game, and why did we love it so much?
And kids have trends amongst themselves just like adults do, although theirs can be even sillier; probably the winner in this category was one my aunt told me, about how there was a year in elementary school where the in thing was to wear dirty white tennis shoes... and when someone got their new tennis shoes, as soon as they got to school the other kids would step on them to get them dirty (she also told me that my mother badgered my grandmother for the white tennis shoes, but wouldn't allow anyone to step on them, and kept them spotless-she was nuts even at that age). The one that sticks out the most in my mind from my own childhood is when all the kids started bringing boxes of Jello to school and eating the powder like it was candy; looking back, I'm honestly curious as to what % of those kids were given the Jello, and what % stole it from the cupboard... in my case, when I'd been allowed a few tastes from the boxes of other kids, and it occurred to me that I should reciprocate, I dug to the back of the pantry and found an old box of chocolate pudding mix that, in one of my VERY rare episodes of doing something I knew I'd get in trouble for if caught, I somehow smuggled out of the house-it wasn't Jello, but everyone who had some liked it. What went through the mind of the 1st kid who thought of eating Jello powder as a candy substitute, and why did it become so popular when regular sweets were available?
Kids can be very strange creatures, let's face it.
Then, there's one that I DID do with the same pleasure as other kids; making forts. Not making houses, which would go along with playing house, or tents, which is what they mostly looked like, or even castles, which would go along with the fantasy play inspired by fairy tales and Disney, but FORTS; since none of us had ever SEEN a fort, or ever been to a fort, and we weren't playing any sort of game that fit in with the concept (ie war games or cowboys and Indians) why was every shaky construction of pillows and blankets that we made and inexplicably enjoyed crouching in called a fort?
I don't know how much creative play kids engage in today, with the availability of so many kinds of electronic entertainment, but in my day it was still clear that kids can make up, and really get into, games that objectively don't seem enjoyable; I remember one that the kids in my neighborhood never tired of, called "You Dumb Animals," in which whoever was "it" would lay on the ground pretending to be asleep, and the other kids would crawl towards that person as quietly as possible, until they "woke up" and chased the "animals" all the way back to whatever their safe place was, whacking them right and left and yelling, you guessed it, "You dumb animals!!" I'm a little vague on the finer points, 30 years later, but I think the one who was "it" wanted to let the "animals" get as close as possible before "waking up," so as to have more time to chase and whack, but that if one of the "animals" got close enough to grab the sleeper, they became "it." Where did we ever get the idea for such a bizarre game, and why did we love it so much?
And kids have trends amongst themselves just like adults do, although theirs can be even sillier; probably the winner in this category was one my aunt told me, about how there was a year in elementary school where the in thing was to wear dirty white tennis shoes... and when someone got their new tennis shoes, as soon as they got to school the other kids would step on them to get them dirty (she also told me that my mother badgered my grandmother for the white tennis shoes, but wouldn't allow anyone to step on them, and kept them spotless-she was nuts even at that age). The one that sticks out the most in my mind from my own childhood is when all the kids started bringing boxes of Jello to school and eating the powder like it was candy; looking back, I'm honestly curious as to what % of those kids were given the Jello, and what % stole it from the cupboard... in my case, when I'd been allowed a few tastes from the boxes of other kids, and it occurred to me that I should reciprocate, I dug to the back of the pantry and found an old box of chocolate pudding mix that, in one of my VERY rare episodes of doing something I knew I'd get in trouble for if caught, I somehow smuggled out of the house-it wasn't Jello, but everyone who had some liked it. What went through the mind of the 1st kid who thought of eating Jello powder as a candy substitute, and why did it become so popular when regular sweets were available?
Kids can be very strange creatures, let's face it.
