Out and Back

The culture of victim-blaming is alive and well

Stepping out from behind my semi-anonymous blogging persona for a moment, I was dismayed (but not altogether surprised) to read a report in one of the local papers about a sexual assault on the Clemson University campus. (My husband is a grad student at Clemson and we live nearby.)

The story reads, in part:

Clemson University police advised students Friday to walk in groups of threes and fours after sunset after a student reported that she was sexually assaulted by two men in a campus parking lot on Perimeter Road early Friday morning.

The student, 18, was exiting her car when one of the men grabbed her from behind and sexually attacked her in Parking lot R-1 about 1:30 a.m., Clemson Police Chief Johnson Link said. She said she was then forced to the ground and attacked by a second man, he said.

She had been waiting in the parking lot for campus escort assistance, Link said. The campus escort is a service offered through the university Police Department that provides an escort for students going across the campus at night.

The student notified Clemson educators several hours later, Link said.

Like a lot of newspapers, the online edition of the Greenville News has a "story chat" feature that allows readers to post their reactions, comments, and thoughts about the various articles, opinion pieces, etc. It makes for entertaining reading a lot of the time, but sometimes the comments that get left are just upsetting. In the case of this article, someone named sillyhunter posted the following (emphases mine):

This story has some questions................Why was this child out in a parking lot this late? Why wait to report a rape later the next morning.....Had enough time to decide if it was a rape or not?? And if she doesn't know about safety in this day and age maybe college is not for her. Sounds like she still needs to be under the watchful eye of a responsible adult. Maybe went to a frat party and had one drink to many and got just a little too loose and had party regrets the next morning??????It's always somebody else's fault never the victim. The difference between a stupid victim and smart person is that one is the victim.

I just about upchucked when I read that comment. I posted my own response (I use the handle "coneydog" when posting to the forums on the Greenville News website) and was heartened to see that someone else posted a response basically telling sillyhunter to shut up.

Yes, dear ones, the culture of victim blaming is alive and well in South Carolina. I guess I'm not surprised, considering how much misogyny still pervades society down here. Any locals who come across this post are probably going to tell me to go the fuck home, Yankee, but I'm not backing down on this one. Rape is an underreported crime, and despite the notoriety of the Duke lacrosse rape case (in which the charges were eventually dropped because the alleged victim kept changing her story and there was no physical evidence linking her to the three players she accused) the number of truly false reports of rape remains quite low. (One reference I found suggested as low as 2% of all reported rapes in the U.S. are false.) And for every rape that is reported, how many go unreported because the victim is ashamed, afraid, or forcibly silenced?

Ladies, it doesn't matter how much you had to drink, what you were wearing, how well you knew the guy, or what you may or may not have done with him in the past. If you didn't want to have sex with him and he went ahead and fucked you anyway, he raped you. It doesn't matter if you fought back or not or if you told him to stop or not, because silence does not equal consent. And to the young woman at Clemson, I hope they catch the pigs that did this to you. For every insensitive creep that calls you "loose" and accuses you of having "party regrets," there are many more of us who care about you and support you without ever having met you. Remember that.

Sacrificing sleep

I am a busy girl.  Lately, when I haven't been on the road for work, I've been working at home and barely finding any time for myself to cram into the 24 hours I'm allotted each day.  I've started sacrificing sleep, much to my husband's annoyance (he positively hates it when I come to bed after he's already settled in for the night.)  No matter how quiet I try to be, I always seem to wake him up.  At least when I'm on the road I can stay up late and go to bed without bothering anyone.

My whole sleep/wake cycle has skewed forward about three or four hours.  Instead of going to bed at 10 or 11, I'm lucky to be in by 1 or 2.  I'm trying to wean myself off of this wacky schedule, but it's hard.  I've always been a bit of a night owl, but, oddly enough, the time of day I love the most is really, really early morning.  As in, you'd still call it nighttime if you didn't know what time it was.  I especially love the hours between 3 and 6 a.m. when, if I'm up, I can literally watch daybreak.

I remember one Saturday night/Sunday morning, back in my single days, when I got a typical middle-of-the-night phone call from this guy I slept with a lot in college, sort of fell in love with, and who still occasionally crosses my mind at weird, inopportune moments.  We hadn't talked in a while so we were on the phone for at least two hours that night/morning/whatever, and when we finally hung up I was so wide awake I didn't even want to think about going back to bed.  So I got dressed, went to this divey diner near my place for eggs, hashbrowns, toast, and nasty coffee, and then took a long drive.  It was still pitch black outside when I left and the stars were out, but by the time I got home it was daylight.  The best part of the drive was witnessing the moment-by-moment transition from night to morning as I made my way down the rural two-lane highway.

I love it when the sun is rising but you can still see stars.

I can't believe I live here

I read the local newspapers online so I can keep up with what's going on at "home."  This evening, while perusing the Anderson Independent Mail, I came across this story:

ANDERSON COUNTY — Two disputes over the proper way to prepare a customer’s meal led to fingers in the face and bodies on the floor at an Anderson County Burger King.

Both incidents needed intervention by Anderson County Sheriff’s deputies at the fast-foot restaurant in the 300 block of S.C. 28 Bypass.

According to the incident reports:

The first 911 call was received at 3:53 p.m. Tuesday.

The second call was received about 40 minutes later.

In the first dispute, two 16-year-old girls, suffering scratches to their necks and faces, threw punches after arguing over the proper way to prepare a chicken sandwich.

No arrests were made.

But minutes later, another employee went to jail.

The second fight, including fingers in the face and two women on the floor, broke out about 4:30 p.m. when one 17-year-old female employee confronted another teenage girl, accusing the 17-year-old of not doing anything to stop the first dispute.

Shamika Smith of Anderson, who reportedly scratched Amanda Green, was charged with assault and battery and taken to the Anderson County Detention Center.

Sigh. Nothing like a girlfight at Burger King making the local paper to make one realize what is really important in life.

My birthday in a parallel universe

I turned 31 earlier this week.  The day itself was pretty low-key, which was fine with me.  Now that I'm in my 30s, my birthdays are cause for introspective contemplation as opposed to partying like there's no tomorrow.  My husband gifted me with a copy of The Crack-Up by you-know-who, along with a DVD of what is arguably VK's sappiest movie (but oh how I love it so.)  My auntie sent me a $20, and my brother gave me a copy of Sherman Alexie's latest book. 

My parents were visiting from Seattle, and they gave me a pair of diamond earrings.  Long story short: I had purchased a pair for myself about two and a half years ago -- my rationale being if I waited around for my husband to buy stuff like that for me I'd be waiting for the rest of my life -- and I wore them constantly because they went with everything.  Then, tragically, this past September as I was preparing to check out of the scummy Quality Inn in Allentown, PA, I left one earring sitting on the counter beside the sink and didn't realize it until I was well on my way down the road.  I was bummed out by the loss, but thoroughly touched that my parents decided to surprise me with a replacement pair for my birthday.  I'm too afraid of losing them again to start wearing them just yet, but I'll get over that soon enough, I suppose.

I baked my own birthday cake (with a little help from Mom) and we went to Sonic for a lunch of chili-cheese Coneys and onion rings.  (I can't quite get over the fact that Sonic calls their hot dogs "Coneys," but I appreciate the reference nonetheless.)  I thought to myself that a better birthday lunch would have been a Nathan's dog, some clam strips, and a beer on the boardwalk at the real Coney Island, but I was happy with my fast food chain facsimile.  We had dinner at a local pizza joint (again, not Totonno's, but still delicious) and then headed back to my apartment for peppermint-fudge birthday cake, which was also quite tasty.

Dreadful

As much as I would like to ignore the news most days (too damn depressing), I usually tune in to some news outlet or another at some point during the day.  I like to have at least a vague idea of what is going on in the world, in the country, and in my little corner of South Carolina.

Sometimes, though, in the quest to be informed, I hear news stories that I wish I could go back and "un-hear."  Such was the case this week when I heard about Tara Grant, the Michigan wife, businesswoman, and mother of two who was strangled and dismembered by her husband in early February.  (He was arrested over the weekend and the big news yesterday was that he had confessed.)

We'll probably never know why Tara's husband, Stephen, killed her... police said that they had argued shortly before her death about her frequent business trips... but I have a hard time believing that that was the only motive.  At any rate, it will take someone with more psychiatric prowess than I have to see into the mind and motivation of a man like that.

I suppose the one thing I've taken away from this tragedy is that we don't know our loved ones nearly as well as we think we do.  If someone had asked Tara on her wedding day if she thought her husband would kill her in the future, she probably would have been horrified at such a suggestion.  It's like what the neighbors say when they find out they've been living next to a serial killer for years: "Oh, he seemed like such a nice person.  Quiet, kept to himself, never caused anybody any trouble."  I guess we never really know.

Goodbye, Anna

When I was in my mid-teens, Anna Nicole Smith was the face of the Guess? clothing brand.  During my teen years, a Guess? denim mini-skirt was a must-have if you were a girl.  I can't remember if I had one or not, though.  I probably did.

I was a pretty girl when I was a teenager, but I wasn't stick-thin and buried under layers of makeup like the spoiled, superficial girls that seemed to make up the majority of the female population at my high school.  I was also smart, studious, and very well-behaved.  As you can imagine, I went to school because the law said I had to (and because I wanted to get good grades so I could get into a good college) but the richest aspects of my life during that time were those that I nurtured outside of the classroom.

As I imagine is the case with most teenagers, high school did a real number on my self-esteem.  Nowadays, I look at photos of myself from those years and I am in awe at how cute I was, but at the time I pretty much hated the way I looked.  This was during the early-90s starved-model craze, where skinnier-than-thou models like Kate Moss were crawling up and down the catwalks and flaunting their bony bodies in print ads, so the pressure to be sickly-thin was definitely there.  I knew girls (and boys) at my school who had eating disorders, and I saw how the imperfect among us were marginalized by our peers.  To this day, I believe that if you can survive high school, you can survive anything.

I still remember the first Guess? ad I saw featuring Anna Nicole Smith.  I think it was in Rolling Stone magazine, of all places.  She was wearing a sleeveless plaid blouse, knotted at the waist, and a pair of jeans.  Her stunning blonde har cascaded around her face, and I was completely shocked and overjoyed by what I was seeing.  Here was a real woman.  A woman with breasts, hips, curves, and flesh.  I remember thinking -- at the tender age of 16 -- that she was so gorgeous, and I remember feeling so reassured by her presence in an ad in a mainstream magazine.  Anna Nicole's Guess? ads helped me start to love myself a little more.

As a result, for the last fifteen years or so, I've had a soft spot in my heart for her.  Like anyone with even a vague awareness of popular culture, I witnessed her struggles, her addictions, her pain.  I went from admiring her to pitying her, but I always loved her.  Even in the tabloid-exploited incoherence that ruled the last few years of her life, I remembered her radiance.  When I learned she had passed away, I felt genuine sadness, although most anyone -- even Anna herself, by some accounts -- could have predicted that she wouldn't live to a ripe old age.

I've been turning away from all the news coverage surrounding the disposition of her remains, the paternity and custody of her baby daughter, and the nutsy judge who's been presiding over things.  It makes me sick.  People who claim to have loved her fighting over her even after her death, and a judge who's just in it for the fifteen minutes of fame.  She's gone.  Let her go.

Thank you, Anna.  I love you and wish you peace.

A week for surprises

Here's my horoscope for today, courtesy of Kajama (one of my favorite sources for horoscopes):

Personal relationships will take a little more effort than usual today, for others' actions won't match their words. If you ponder the motives behind someone's bad mood, you'll know what to do to comfort them. The full Moon in Gemini will illuminate the landscape and some new concepts for you to consider. Your tarot card is the Magician, so watch for a number of surprises to come your way this week.

Surprises, huh?  Well, I hope they will be pleasant ones.

I don't really believe in astrology, but I like reading my horoscope... it gives me something to reflect on.  I treat my horoscope more like a "thought for the day" as opposed to a predictor of how my day is going to go.  And anyway, if my horoscope actually predicted my day, it would go something like this:

You'll spend the morning doing laundry, and then be overcome by an attack of boredom mid-afternoon.  Hit the mall.

The things this desperate housewife does all day

Since the beginning of October, I have been effectively unemployed.  I say "effectively" because I was retained as a consultant by my previous employer to complete one last project.  That project is now in the home stretch, so in a little while my effective unemployment will go to actual, full-on unemployment. 

As in no paycheck. 

No benefits. 

No shit.

I have had a few job leads and interviews over the past month and a half or so, but no job offers so far.  I was beaten out for one position by an unexpected internal candidate, and I'm pretty sure I lost out on another job because my competition was an alum of the college where I was applying to work.  In between interviews and work on my consulting project, I've occupied myself with networking, writing, housekeeping, surfing the internet, and that evil, evil destroyer of time, television.

I love DirecTV.

The little blue light on our DirecTV box is hypnotic.  It calls to me and keeps my butt rooted to our IKEA couch like nothing else can.  On a day when nothing else is going on, the TV can sometimes be on from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.  (Before you freak out and call me a couch potato, let me add that I'm usually multitasking while the TV is on -- cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, working on the laptop, playing with the cats, job-hunting, reading, etc.)  The TV is my companion, my background noise.  But that doesn't mean I don't have my favorite shows.  DirecTV allows me to go through the whole day's schedule and select the programs I want to watch, and then when it's time, it automatically tunes to the right channel.  Really, how lazy do you have to be?

Here is my typical viewing schedule:

You Nazi cow

The crazy-ass conservative soccer moms are at it again.  This time, it's some beyotch down in Georgia (just a little ways from me) who is trying to get the Harry Potter books banned from the school libraries in Gwinnett County on account of the fact that they supposedly advocate witchcraft.

Oh, please.

I'm reminded of my favorite scene in Field of Dreams when Amy Madigan's character takes on the book-burning beyotch at the PTA.  "Step outside, you Nazi cow!"

News flash: Harry Potter's been around for years now.  J.K. Rowling is almost finished with the series.  Have we seen legions of young readers turning to witchcraft, devil-worship, and all those other horrible, horrible things that the Nazi cows are afraid of?  I don't fucking think so.  Get bent, Laura Mallory.

Puke-o-rama

Well, it's been an interesting weekend, to say the least.  Full of all sorts of vomitous fun.  I woke up yesterday morning to make a run to Target and discovered that someone had (ostensibly) barfed on the passenger side of my car on Monday night.  (I'm not really sure what it was but there was a nasty mess all over the passenger side window.)  So I went through the carwash to clean that off and tried not to think about it.

Then, last evening, as hubby and I stood in front of our house admiring his re-pointing job, we were subjected to a drive-by puking.  I looked up just in time to see a woman lean out of her car and ralph into the gutter just a few doors up from our house before the car drove off.  Lovely.  Too much Independence Day cheer, I imagine.  I was pleased with myself because I only got slightly panicky and I trembled very little.  It was still disgusting, though.

Then I woke up at 2:00 this morning with a bad stomach ache, presumably from the pizza I ate last night.  Everything stayed where it belonged, but I was mightily uncomfortable for a good hour or so.  Blech.  Thank God for Pepto-Bismol.

Oh well, I suppose it was all good exposure therapy for my phobia if nothing else, right?

I hope all my readers had a more pleasant (and less nauseating) weekend!

Borderline Personality Disorder - for real or bogus?

I'm reading a book about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) called Stop Walking on Eggshells; Coping When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder.  It's interesting.  My shrink recommended I read it, because someone in my family has a condition that shares some traits with BPD.

It's also a little bit scary because I have been known to exhibit, at various times, some characteristics commonly considered symptomatic of BPD.  I've also read Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (in which she recounts her experience receiving treatment for BPD in a mental hospital in the late 60s.) I saw the movie version, too, and I related very strongly to Susanna in many respects:

I know what it's like to want to die.  How it hurts to smile.  How you try to fit in but you can't.  How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.

The book I'm currently reading looks like it will provide some valuabe help to me in dealing with the relative in question, but I frequently find myself questioning whether or not Borderline Personality Disorder is for real.  Here's a quote from a website on BPD:

With the criteria for the diagnosis of mental illness rapidly changing to reflect new research, it's tough to be a mental health professional out there in the trenches. Is BPD a traumatic or dissociative disorder (childhood sexual/physical/verbal abuse), an attachment disorder (insufficient bonding with caretakers in early life), an affective mood imbalance (a sub-form of Bipolar), a genetically inherited vulnerability related to ADHD or alcoholism, a sexist labelling of women who do not fit the norm -- or all of the above?

As I've read about and researched this disorder, I've found that there is a wide degree of disagreement among mental health professionals as to its validity.  The very fact that women are diagnosed with BPD more than men are says something to me about whether or not this thing is for real.  Susanna Kaysen herself questioned the validity of her diagnosis.  I think it's really easy to just slap a convenient label on someone, and from what I have read, BPD has long been the label of choice for a lot of therapists.  Is it really for real, or is it just another combination of symptoms that someone decided to group together and give a name to?  All I know is that without getting down to the root cause of the problem and trying to fix that, you're never going to get anywhere.

Anyway, that's what I'm chewing on this particular Saturday morning.

Getting my head examined

I saw a therapist yesterday.  (I'm sorry... have to chuckle for a second... every time I type the word "therapist" I think of that stupid SNL Jeopardy sketch with Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek and Darrell Hammond doing Sean Connery... "I'll take "The Rapists" for $600, Alex....")

Hokay.... got that out of my system.  (Ahem.)

I saw a therapist yesterday.  I think she is going to be really good.  After I told her what was going on with me, she actually asked what I wanted to get out of therapy.  I replied, "to stop myself before I do more damage."  I was being glib, but it was true.  I stepped out of glibland long enough to explain my therapeutic aspirations.

I'm a big fan of counseling/therapy/analysis/whatever.  It has helped me in the past a great deal.  I am sure there are plenty of people in my world who would make the argument that I need to be committed, but I seem to stop short of that by just kicking my own sorry ass through the door of a therapist's office every so often.

Being listened to without judgement really helps sometimes.

Crisis

Shawn Colvin's Round of Blues does a good job of summing up how I'm feeling right now:

All this time
I been makin' deals
Shades of black and white
On a Hollywood reel
All this time
I been missing
Something so real
All this time
I been a face in the crowd
Now I'm living in color
And laughing out loud
All these names
For just foolin' around
It's a new breakthrough
It's an old breakdown

We smoked a lot of hope
We did our cryin', too
We're finally waking up
To what real love can do
Down a lost highway
Under the twilight moon
A chorus in your eyes
Another round of blues

Something I will never understand

I have to preface this post by saying that I have had a lot to drink (we were at three different Christmas parties tonight.)  I spent about 30 minutes at one of the parties listening to this idiotic woman spout off her decidedly right-wing vitriol.  If my head had been less fuzzy (a side effect of the vodka and cranberry juice I'd been drinking) I would have read her the riot act and snapped her skinny rich-bitch pilates ass over my knee.

Here's my question: what the HELL are Republican women thinking?  Republican men I can understand -- the Republican party is the party of male dominance and crushing the poor and downtrodden.  But women?  You might as well be signing your own death warrant.  I just cannot understand how any woman could align herself with the party that for decades has conspired to keep women down.  To all you female Repubs, I say.... you are traitors.  You are an insult to your gender.  There is an extra-warm corner in hell reserved especially for you.

I suppose there are women out there who just need to get fucked up the ass (literally and figuratively) every now and then by rich white men, and joining the Republican party is just the most efficient way to get what they need.  To each her own, but ladies, please... don't fuck it up for the rest of us, OK?  (This includes you, Condi.  Don't even get me started on you!!!!)

(The preceding rant has been brought to you by Stolichnaya.)

My worst fear

I am convinced that everyone has at least one hideous, irrational fear.  Mine is particularly strange.  I haven't actually met anyone (other than on internet message boards) who shares my fear.  To tell the truth, my fear goes beyond fear... it's more of a phobia.

I'm scared of vomiting.

The technical term for this is emetophobia.  Here are some ramifications of that fear:

* I am obsessively hygienic when I am around someone who has been sidelined by a stomach virus.  I worship at the altar of Purell in order to avoid having to worship the porcelain god.

* I have to fast forward through scenes in movies and tv shows where the act is depicted.  I even have a subscription to a website called screenit.com, which provides reviews of current films geared toward parents and specifically mentions acts of vomiting under the "Blood/Gore" heading. Any time there is a new movie out that I want to see, I check screenit to see if there are any vomit scenes.  If there are, I wait for the DVD so I can fast forward.

* I have never been so drunk that I've puked.  (Some people have made the argument that, because of this, I've never truly been drunk. I beg to differ.  I've been plastered.  Just not enough to hurl.)

* I cook poultry until it's dry and rubbery because I am so afraid of what salmonella would do to me.

* I stockpile saltines and ginger ale... just in case.

* If I actually see or hear someone throw up, I panic.  I have to get away.  My heart races and my palms sweat and I have to flee.

* I refer to actress Mischa Barton as "Mischa Barfin'" because of that infamous scene in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. I was caught totally off-guard and couldn't eat for twelve hours after seeing that movie the first time.  (That was before I discovered screenit.)

* Like many emetophobics, I remember the date of my last vomiting episode.  (Jerry talks about his "vomit streak" in one episode of Seinfeld.  I think he might have a touch of this phobia, too.)

* Whenever I feel nauseated, I will fight it for hours, hoping it will go away.  I really would rather be killed or maimed than vomit.  I won't give in and barf until I am 100% sure there is no other alternative.

OK, before you all go and label me a total wack-job, let me share something with you.  My version of this phobia is mild compared to some people's.  I have encountered people in my research who are so debilitated by this fear that they won't eat in restaurants or consume food that they haven't prepared themselves.  There are emetophobics who will throw away a container of yogurt if it gets "too close" to the expiration date.  Some won't touch alcohol, go to amusement parks, get pregnant, or put themselves in any situation where they might vomit or be exposed to vomiting.  Some can't even leave their homes.  In all honesty, my vomit issues are mild compared to some people's.

I've also read that emetophobia isn't really that weird.  After all, I don't think anybody particularly enjoys vomiting.... although I guess there are people who get some kind of a sexual charge out of it.  Roman shower enthusiasts/emetophiles aside, though, most people don't like to hurl.  It just isn't any fun.  Other phobias, such as the fear of heights or the fear of spiders are a little more irrational.  Most spiders won't hurt you, and when you're up high in the air there are some wonderful views to be had.  But barfin' has not one redeeming quality.  (I know, I know, it's one of the body's defense mechanisms -- a way to quickly rid itself of toxins -- but it's really, really godawful and unpleasant.  Give me diarrhea any day.)

I guess I am kind of strange.  I can handle horror movies with lots of slashing and splatter, I like scary haunted house rides, I'll brave the most fearsome roller coaster.... but I won't watch The Exorcist. Spiders don't phase me (I don't like them, but they don't give me panic attacks), I will happily scoop out my cats' litter boxes or change a dirty diaper, but I just can't handle puke.  (It's also unusual that I actually am able to write the word "vomit" and all of its associated slang terms -- there are some emetophobics who can't even say or write the words.)

One upshot of being emetophobic is that I would be a terrible bulimic, so I guess that is a good thing.  But the negative ramifications far outweigh the positives -- there are a lot of career options that I didn't even consider (such as medicine or early childhood education) because of the potential for exposure.  My fear has implications for my future as a parent (the thought of morning sickness freaks me out and I've already told my husband that when we have a kid, he has to handle the throw-up.  I'll handle everything else, but he has to take care of the barfing.)  Interestingly, I think one of the reasons I am emetophobic is the very same reason that people become bulimic or anorexic: control.  I notice that my phobia is worse when my life in general is feeling out of control... the more "in control" I feel, the less I am fazed by a little barf.  It's when my control is threatened that the idea of vomiting feels like a fate worse than death.

Another unique thing about this phobia is that exposure therapy (which can work for curing other phobias) tends to backfire for us "emets" and make the phobia worse.  Cognitive behavioral therapy seems to have the most promise for helping us overcome our fear.  I have also learned that when the chips are really down and I have no choice but to confront vomiting or the possibility of vomiting I usually surprise myself and rise to the occasion (no pun intended!)  Example: I traveled to Seattle in 2004 to stay with my parents while my father was in the hospital for colon cancer surgery and my mother was getting chemotherapy for lymphoma.  I took my mom to one of her chemo treatments and was not afraid.  Most chemo patients experience nausea and vomiting within the first day or two after an infusion, so my mother very matter-of-factly set out her emesis basin on the bathroom counter the evening after her treatment, just in case.  My heart leapt into my throat, but I stayed calm.  She didn't get sick, but the possibility was always there and I managed to deal with it.  Some emetophobic mothers that I've talked to have said that when it is their own kid who is sick, the maternal instinct takes over and they have no problem.  Judging from my experience with my mother, that instinct seems to work from child to parent as well.

I suppose there is hope for me.  I am frustrated that there is so little else that truly frightens me to this degree.  But, as I said, we all have at least one big irrational fear and this is mine.  Not many people in my life (other than my family) even know.  I can hide it well, and perhaps one day I will overcome it completely... talking and writing about it seems to help, so I thank my readers for indulging me.

Bungled burglars and twists of fate

I had an experience today which was unsettling, to say the least.  Fortunately, it ended well.  My purse was almost stolen at work today.  The department in which I work is spread out over three floors of one building.  One colleague and I inhabit a small office on the third floor, there is another cluster of colleagues on the second floor, and yet another group on the first floor.  As you can probably imagine, my job involves a lot of rides on the elevator (or trips up and down the stairs if I'm feeling ambitious) depending on which of my co-workers I need to see.

Normally, when I am at work, I chuck my purse under my desk, where it is well out of the way and not obvious unless someone is deliberately searching for it.  My computer tower conceals it partially, and when my chair is pushed up close to the desk it is very difficult to see.  This afternoon at a few minutes to four, I headed downstairs to ask two of my colleagues a question, and to deliver some papers to a third colleague.  My first stop was on the second floor -- I got my question answered and chatted with my colleagues for a few minutes, and then made my way out of their office to begin my descent to the first floor.  Just as I was stepping into the hallway, I saw a man walking slightly ahead of me.  He was dressed in grubby jeans and a white polo-style shirt, and he had my purse tucked under his right arm.

He heard me behind him and turned to me as if to ask where the restroom or a particular office was.  Before he could get the words out, I asked, "Why do you have my purse?"  He replied, "This isn't your purse -- it's my wife's.  She left it upstairs and I went to get it for her."  By this point, I had recognized my heart-shaped keychain from the Swiss Bank, and I knew he was mistaken.  I stepped closer to him and said, "No, that's definitely my purse.  I recognize my keys."  He kept insisting that it wasn't mine, that it belonged to his wife.  Decisively, I grabbed it away from him, set it down on a table nearby, and said, "Let me show you."  He continuned to protest, but I whipped out my wallet and waved my driver's license in his face.  "You see that?" I fairly shrieked, pointing at the small photo of myself on the license.  "That's ME!  WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO DO?"  I kept stepping closer and closer to him, daring him to deny the truth of the matter.

He said, "There must be some kind of mix-up.  I'm going to go get my wife.  She's just downstairs."  And then he took off.  I hollered to my co-worker down the hall to call security, that some guy had just tried to steal my purse.  Our security officers made a thorough check of the area surrounding our building, but the would-be thief had gotten away.  They took a report from me and thanked me for calling them.  I was able to give them a pretty good description of the guy, right down to the Howard Johnson logo on his white polo shirt.  I warned all of my female co-workers to double check and make sure their purses were still present.  It seemed that mine was the only one the guy had gotten to.

A frightening post-script to this is that my office-mate was in our office when my purse was taken, and she didn't hear a thing.  The guy would have had to silence my jangling keys as he dug my purse out from under my desk, and on top of that she couldn't see over the partition that separates our two desks.  When I left the office, all the horrific scenarios ran through my head.  What if I had stepped into the hallway just ten seconds later, or earlier?  What if he had actually gotten away with my purse?  My keys, wallet, and checkbook were in there, and he would have had a pretty nice time with all of that stuff, I would imagine.  It would have been short work for him to come to our house, let himself in, and help himself to whatever he wanted, never mind all the identity theft he could have successfully pulled off!

There were a couple of positive things, though... I realized, much to my relief, that I am in fact capable of being an aggressive bitch when I have to be.  I was prepared to tackle this guy for my $358 Coach signature tie-dye shoulder tote and its precious contents, so I must be tougher than I sometimes feel.  When the security officer was taking my statement, someone radioed him and he replied, "I'm here with the victim now."  Victim?  I don't fucking think so!!

The fact that I caught him in the act has reaffirmed my belief that things happen for a reason.  Someone or something was watching out for me, so maybe my karma isn't so bad after all.  And I have learned my lesson: from now on, my purse goes in a locked drawer.  Out of sight, out of (thief's) mind.

Here's hoping Tuesday is better!  Oh yeah, and if you see a skinny white guy with dirty jeans and a white polo with the Howard Johnson logo on it, beat him senseless for me.