Reprise: Rough Day at the Office, Dear?

Although this one included no dead bodies, it was a fairly stressful day at the desk for awhile.

We are grand communicators and have been so for many, many years. We engage in light banter and deadly serious discussions in which we solve all the problems of the universe. There are dashes of laughter, tears, encouragement and barking at one another when called for. We use the telephone, blogs (our own and those of others), face to face, and the BlackBerry. We each read the other's face with almost 100% accuracy. Our messages to one another can range from "I came across this online ~ follow the link." to "Dammit, find my Tupperware and baking dishes and return them all!" Most days start with some contact sandwiched between my pre-dawn miles walking and his early cycling. "Hey, it's cold." "Yeah, but dry!"

Following the most wonderful and astutely planned 24-hour camping trip, we'd dished back and forth for some 36 hours. The last e-mail exchange had been warm, friendly, close . . . normal. He is strategizing for a cycling race of great importance to him. I cheer loudly and offer advice, though I am not a cyclist. "How's your lab imaging project going?" "Are the phones ringing? Are you booking jobs?"

I heard the e-mail hit and saw it was from him, but I was busy. Some 40 minutes later, I opened it. It was short and succinct. Three words, precisely. "F*#k you bitch" No period at the end of the sentence. Now, I must say I know these words and many other hard, plain arrows of assault and insult. That phrase (in one form or another, a little lighter or a little heavier) has even been tossed at me from time to time. But not by him. He doesn't speak to me that way. When that cowboy and I wrangle, it is done with civil language. We attempt to be productive in our anger.

To say I was shocked does not begin to tell the story. I (literally) physically recoiled, placing my hands on the edge of the desk and pushing my chair backward. I felt gut-kicked. My brain tried to take the wheel, suggesting "Look again. This can't be happening." I leaned forward and peered at the open e-mail on my monitor. Yes, it definitely was from him. There was our full string of e-mails throughout the morning, one after another, culminating in "F*#k you bitch". I'm pretty quick on my feet, even when shocked, so I popped back a short "Why in the world would you send me an e-mail to say "F*#k you bitch"? Why?" I pushed back the chair and churned. I only had to wait three minutes.


My BlackBerry announced incoming and I felt a light wave of relief even before opening the e-mail. Now I'd find out what on earth was going on and try to address it. I opened the e-mail expecting some words of explanation. It said, "Because it is true". WTF? [You see, I can use that word, too!] I fired off another e-mail saying, "What on earth is happening? Please tell me what is going on." And I heard back n-o-t-h-i-n-g.

David walked by my desk, got a look at my face and did a double-take. "What's happened?" I choked out a request for him to hold down the fort for awhile and went out onto the deck. I called the number programmed into my BlackBerry and it immediately rolled to voicemail. That's OK, I've got another number or two I can try. He answered his cell phone and sounded pretty pleased to hear from me. Normal voice, "Hi, what's up?" I lit into that man in a way I'd be embarrassed to describe. "Why would you send me an e-mail like that?" He was baffled. "Like what? What has upset you so?" I proceeded to explain that most women would not enjoy receiving a message of "F*#k you bitch". "What?! I didn't do that and I wouldn't do that!"

I am not in the habit of yelling "Liar!" at this man. He's never behaved in a way that would require that of me. Instead, I said, "Well, then your BlackBerry has elected to send me nasty-grams on its own." He asked me to wait a moment while he looked at his e-mail account. I could hear his fingers clacking on the keyboard. "My god. What in the hell?" All right, reader, I know this man. He is unsuccessful when he attempts to fool me. But he wasn't even trying in this instance. I could tell he was utterly confounded. I could sense he was scrolling through the offensive e-mail and then it struck him. "Hey, where's my BlackBerry?" Uh-oh. Yes. Missing on a high school campus.

We both sprang into action. He called his service provider and arranged to halt service. I sent an e-mail to his account saying, "You're pretty funny. We also have good humor. We'll pay a reward for the BlackBerry." There was no reply to that e-mail and the BlackBerry is likely in the trash now that it no longer works. The rest of the story is anticlimactic except that the loud, objectionable girls who found and used the device called Mother Badger in Arizona and gave her some snarky talk. Mother Badger was a school teacher whose gaze could melt the sneakers off an 8-year-old boy's feet. I'm sure she handled her encounter with these girls better than I handled mine.

The reader may think, "Hmmm, OK, man loses BlackBerry. Why is that news?" Well, that's not the gist of my post, favored reader. Those who have joined me on the bus from time to time may realize I am a flawed person with all the disorders one might expect from someone who walked my exact path in life. I've got "stuff" going on. But I work at my "stuff". Pretty much daily. Diligently. And the payoff for that is good. You see, I like learning new things. When something isn't working for me, I try something new. Many times I learn some new good thing I can apply to other situations, thereby proving that old dogs can learn new tricks. Still finding my way along at age 57.

So what did I do differently this time? I didn't let the fear rule me. I took the wheel away from Fear. Of course, I was upset. Anyone would be. And of course, I immediately did all I could to reach him, because it was reasonable to ask, "Hey, what gives?" But instead of deciding that really was his horrible intended message to me and jumping off the deck, I investigated. When I spoke to him on the phone, I listened to him carefully. As I listened, I knew right away that he was baffled because I relied upon what I know about him. It's called trust. There was no plot afoot to fling me into the fiery depths of hell. He wasn't finally showing his evil hand after fooling me for 42 years that he is a good man. It was simply that his property was lost, found and used to make mischief. I think I handled this the way pretty much any healthy person would have. I think I can do it again in other situations. It puts me in mind of something he once said to me: "Fear is not having enough information."

In my ears right now: I liked it then, I like it now.

Something that charmed me: I had a few hours to kill as I drove east toward Nevada and the cyclist rode my precise route, miles behind. The plan was for me to park at the agreed upon mile marker and put some miles on my carcass in the desert where I could be seen from the highway at all times. I did that, but hey! I had a camera and I was going to pass through the burg of Tecopa, CA, population 99 in the 2000 census, and I know how to have fun. Tecopa has no gas station, no convenience store, few residences. It has a school and a hot springs and here, in out-of-the-way Tecopa, can be found the Promise Land. I didn't go in. I was desert sweaty and I had hat-hair. I thought I may be a little too "big city" for the sensibilities of those 99 citizens of Tecopa. But I surely enjoyed walking around and taking in the ambience.