Sunday, May 19, 2002 |
01:48 - What a Wonderful World
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/05/Thereisgoodness.shtml
|
(top) |
We may be a bunch of money-grubbing, self-centered, gun-toting, simplistic, anarchistic cowboys with bulletproof hair-- but we return each other's property, at least on occasion, as Steven den Beste found out.
I'm reminded of a story that happened to me back in 1996, during that godawful set of trimesters when I flamed out of my sophomore year and spent the fall quarter at home taking classes at Mendocino College so I could build up a good GPA and petition UASH in the winter to let me back into Caltech. I was taking the highest-level math class the college offered (which actually was about equivalent in content to the Math 2 class that I was supposed to be taking at Tech, though not as rigorous), as well as creative writing and a couple of other time-fillers. I also carried around a sketch notebook, which was filled with... erm, well, material of an intensely personal nature. It didn't have my name in it, nor my address, or any other identification; just a title page warning unauthorized readers of what content lay beyond.
And I lost it one day, in the math classroom. I apparently just left it sitting there. The next day, panicked, I asked my math teacher and the teachers who used the room after my class whether anyone had turned it in; I asked the campus Lost & Found repeatedly over the next few days whether it had turned up. No luck; never any leads. Eventually I gave up, figuring that at least nobody at the college knew me or knew that the notebook was mine, so I would at least be spared embarrassment.
So imagine the gear into which my brain shifted when a few days later, the notebook appeared in my home mailbox, in a plain brown wrapper, with no return address or note or explanation. Imagine the paranoia of my subsequent week or two. Imagine my rocking back and forth on my heels in a fetal position, mentally cataloging every face I knew on campus and retracing my steps, over and over and over. And I never did find out who it was, not to this day.
Yeah, humans aren't inherently evil. But some of them are sadistic mofo's.
|
|