BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Continued From:

Who Is This, And How Did You Get In My Computer? PART 1…

The modem had finally negotiated a compatible communications protocol and was “speaking” to another device somewhere. For all I knew, that somewhere was halfway around the world, or just right next door – remember, Caller ID was just an idea from the land of Sci-Fi back then…

I waited impatiently for what was going to happen next… Having seen Wargames more than once – I did work at a video store, after all – I was pretty much bracing myself for some idiot to type in “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?” then tell me his name was Joshua and that he controlled all of the nuclear missiles in the country. If that happened, I was going to be even less happy than I already was.

The screen cleared and the phosphor green cursor winked at me from the upper left corner of the monitor. I sat watching, my hands in my lap and one eyebrow raised as I waited for something more to appear. After what seemed like a full thirty seconds had passed, the cursor dropped down two lines on the screen of its own accord, as if some phantom had just hit the enter key twice.

A second or two later, one laborious letter at a time, the word “hello” appeared.

I was still perturbed, but now I was also slightly curious. Obviously I had a live person at the other end, and I was assuming they were aware that they had one too. After all, they had just kept calling and calling until they managed a connection, so this apparently fit into their plan somewhere along the line.

Of course, I did have one thing going through my mind. BBS’s (Bulletin Board Systems – a precursor to the Internet) were seriously gaining popularity around this time. I, myself, frequented several, and while I ended up actually hosting and running one a few months after this incident, I wasn’t doing so at that moment. Of course, someone with a number close to mine could have been, and this could all be a matter of a mis-dial. This would mean the person at the other end might be just as confused as me right now since there was no welcome screen or login prompt being displayed.

I stared at the glowing word on the screen a moment longer. The thing was, BBS popularity was big among the 11-14 year old crowd, so I really needed to avoid typing back a string of expletives damning this person for interrupting my night, lest it be some tween with a Commodore 64 who would go running to mommy and daddy screaming that some guy at XXX-XXXX telephone number was cussing at him.

Keeping this in mind, I rested my fingers on the keys. “Hello,” I typed back, much faster than my mystery caller had. Of course, I typed around 85wpm back then. Now, it’s more like 60wpm. Arthritis seriously sucks… But, I digress…

The person at the other end slowly typed again, “hello”.

I rolled my eyes. It seemed I didn’t have a rocket scientist calling me, so the likelihood of it being a tween with a hastily – and incorrectly – scrawled BBS number from a buddy at school instantly grew.

I set my fingers flying across the keyboard once again. “Sorry, but this number isn’t a BBS. It’s the number for a private individual.”

I waited for a response.

It came. “ya so”

Apparently the mystery tween was also a smartass who didn’t have a shift key or a grasp of punctuation. The latter two, while irritating, I could forgive. The first one, not so much… So, not really having patience for that sort of thing – I was young, remember…not that I have all that much patience for it now either, but I was much worse back then – I control-keyed myself over to the command menu and disconnected the call without bothering to type an answer.

Now, the thing about modems is this – they only do what they have been told to do. And, back then (even today for that matter, though it is far more transparent than it was in the good ol’ days) you would generally tell them to do something with what was called an “AT” command. Why? Because all commands started with the letters “AT” of course, which more or less stood for “ATTENTION”… So, it was pretty much “Attention modem, do this” – although it took the form of commands like ATA (Attention modem: Answer) or ATS13=0 (Attention modem: set bit on register 13 to zero – essentially “off”… binary and all that jazz…)

My point here is that with the exception of telling the modem to disconnect the annoying a$$wipe kid who was connected, the last thing I had told the device to do was initialize in the Auto Answer mode. Since I had not “reset” any registers, as far as it was concerned, it was going to answer the phone.

So, when the phone inevitably rang again, it did what it was intent on doing.

I suppose I could have picked up the phone, or  quickly entered a re-init code before the third ring had sounded, but I didn’t. I just muttered, “Little f*cking bastard,” and sat there as the system connected and warbled through a fresh protocol negotiation.

The screen cleared and I was faced with “hello” once again.

I keyed in, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“no” was the response.

I typed back, “Some of us have to go to work in the morning.”

“ya me to,” my mystery caller laboriously returned. (BTW, I am misspelling my mystery caller’s entries as close to the way they were misspelled as I can remember.)

I raised an eyebrow… Okay, either I had an adult or a lying tween. I was leaning toward lying tween, but one never knew. You still don’t these days. Susie Silky Thighs in the hot sex chat room could be a 52 year old drunk guy sitting there in his underwear pulling his pud for all you know. I think there was even a viral video out on the net where someone used that idea for a commercial or something… Yeah, I know… Oh look, a chicken… (I really, really do think that chicken thing is friggin’ hilarious…) Oh, and BTW, I don’t hang out in hot sex chatrooms… I’m married to E K, so why would I bother? My ex-boss did, however, and probably still does… yeah, ‘nother blog.

So, anyway, mystery caller says he/she has to go to work in the morning too.

“Okay, so don’t you think it’s bedtime?” I typed back.

“not yet,” was the reply. “what ar you dooing”

“Getting annoyed,” I replied.

“ya”

I decided to ask the obvious question. “Who is this?”

“you no” came across the screen.

I replied, “Obviously I don’t or I wouldn’t have asked.”

By way of a response I got, “pool open yet”

This one gave me pause. Obviously this was someone who knew me, or  at the very least knew I had a pool. If it was one of my friends then they already knew whether or not the pool was open, so I couldn’t imagine them asking such a question. I turned in my seat to look around at my windows. The blinds were drawn so I didn’t figure I was being watched, unless this whack job on the other end had X-ray vision or something. I allowed my gaze to linger for a moment on the headboard of the bed where I had my loaded .357 magnum stashed. I considered getting it out and laying it beside the keyboard, but thought maybe that was being just a bit too paranoid.

“Who is this?” I typed again, none to excited about the creepy stalker feeling I was now getting.

“i see you tammarow” was the only answer I received before the modem clicked and the call disconnected.

I sat for nearly an hour waiting for another call, but it never came.

Before finally climbing back into bed I saw to it that I checked the load on my pistol and shifted it to be within reaching distance if something awakened me unexpectedly… You know, like a psycho killer stalker or something, know what I mean?

The next morning I was still ruminating over the whole incident, and doing a lot of looking over my shoulder as well. I called all my friends with computer equipment and asked them if they were screwing with me, to which I received believable answers to the negative. I told my co-workers about it and even a couple of my regular customers who had become slightly more than acquaintances but not quite good friends. They all agreed that it was a bit weird, and one even suggested I contact the police. Of course, even then I knew better than to believe the cops would do anything about it. I mean, after all, what could they do other than take a report? That way there would be a paper trail when my corpse was found hanging from a swing set in the park with my hands chopped off, or some oddball crap like that.

Yeah… big help…

It was sometime after lunch – mid afternoon as I recall – when Scott Ruddle wandered into the store and listened to me tell the story.  (In case you are new here, or don’t remember previous references to Scott, he ended up being my best man when E K and I married. He’s also the person upon whom the character Detective Benjamin Storm, from the RGI novels, is based… Yeah, that Scott Ruddle…) So, anyway, this was well prior to the beer can tossing… (see: There I was, Just Sitting By The Pool…) In fact, we had only just recently met and the friendship we eventually developed hadn’t even officially been launched just yet. At this point he was one of those “pretty good acquaintance – semi almost friend” types. As he stood there nodding his head and adding an occasional “no sh*t?” to let me know he really was listening, it suddenly dawned on me.

I stopped mid sentence and stared at him, then started shaking my head. “You friggin’ bastard,” I said.

No longer able to contain himself he started laughing.

And, so began my psyche damaging, sometimes very odd, but lasting and incredibly true friendship with Sergeant Scott Ruddle and his wife.

Now you know why I’m just a bit addled in the head…

And, yeah… Now he’s a cop. Like I’ve said before, welcome to my world…

More to come…

Murv

Part 12 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: Where’s Everybody Going?

…And the bride and groom said let there be food… And there was food… And the food was good… And the food cost a whole bunch of money… And there were leftovers for eons… And so on, and so on, and so on…

Yep… No two ways about it. We had food. In some respects I suppose that has also set the tone for any parties and such we have had ever since. Trust me, there’s never a shortage of food.

Because of that, one of my favorite kitchen appliances is a vacuum sealer – or, as I like to call it, the suck ‘n seal machine.  I think it’s actually called a “Foodsaver®” and the company that produced it describes the thing as a “food storage system”…Or they did… Mine is an older model that E K gave me for Christmas many years ago, so they might have changed their tag line… All I know is that I put stuff in the bag, suck out all the air, and heat seal the edge – Voila! Vacuum packed food that can survive a stay in the freezer quite a bit longer than average… Wish I’d had one of ’em back then…

Of course, as I said, the overabundance of chow made for an easy go of it over the next week (plus  a handful of days). I didn’t have to cook, simply reheat – for those of you who may be new to my blog, go back through some of the earlier entries and you’ll find out why I keep saying, “I didn’t have to cook…” In a nutshell, my bride doesn’t much care for kitchen duty… Fortunately, I already knew that coming into this…

I suppose that if we had been thinking, we would have taken a better picture or two of the spread.  In all honesty, we weren’t really thinking about much of anything, other than simply getting to the other side of all this with our sanity intact. I’m pretty sure that at some point we were both just on autopilot, which is probably why we made it without  the benefit of pharmaceuticals, shock therapy, or straight jackets.  I guess it’s lucky we even have the pictures we do since we accomplished this on a shoestring, and had way too many irons in the fire on top of it all. Looking back now, I seriously doubt we could manage to pull it together the way we did back then. I don’t know if it would be just a matter of not having the energy, or if the simple knowledge of the fact that we overcame so many obstacles – not the least of which was money – would scare us out of even trying. Of course, they say love conquers all…

And I say yet again, “whoever the hell they are… “

But, I think maybe they are correct in this case. We made it happen and  it’s one hell of a memory…

I suppose what has brought it back around in my mind at this particular point in my life is the FAQ. Because of my profession I get asked all manner of questions by fans, and this one has always been at the top of the list for some reason. Maybe because I babble on incessantly about E K, no matter where I am.

And, to fuel that fire, there is also a simple, yet very profound fact that I recently realized, as I was sitting here writing this in fact,.. Next month, February 2009, it will be 23 years since I first laid eyes upon E K and fell headfirst, unequivocally, no holds barred, just plain blithering stupid, in love with her, no matter what my co-workers had said. To me, that’s a rare thing and “lightning strike” special… (Just a quick addendum: Yes, I know, February was last month, but hey, I originally wrote this in January.)

Of course, the real cause could just be that I’m just getting old and my mind is going… That’s always a possibility…

But, to continue in the sappy, sentimental vein I have started here, time has “marched on.” Life has taken twists, turns, and thrown horrible roadblocks in our path…

Friends have gone, moved away, lost touch. Some couples that were there with us on that evening have since split, going their separate ways and finding love elsewhere, or in some cases finding happiness alone. Others have disappeared, only to reappear in unexpected places. Some are long out of touch, but not forgotten.

And, as is inevitable for us all, some family members have since crossed over the veil betwixt the worlds, leaving us to face this existence without them. In that respect, one of the worst of the “potholes” along the road was the sudden and very unexpected loss of my mother just a scant few weeks after the wedding, but that is, as I often say, a different blog.

And what of Erin? (Remember Erin?)… Well, I cannot tell a lie… That little parenthetical tag throughout these missives was just me having fun. Erin was one of those friends who moved away and with whom we lost touch. E K and I both hope she is doing well, and if she happens to be surfing the web some day and stumbles across this blog, maybe she’ll drop us a line… We’d love to hear from her.

But, through it all: trials, tribulations, loss, gain, joy, sadness, and speed bumps galore, E K and I remain. Together and weathering whatever we must.  We still live in that very same house where we took our vows, where I dropped her ring, and where she strapped on her stockings with rubber bands.  We eat our meals in the room where our friends and family gathered to watch my bride smear me with cake; and we watch the morning news sitting in a chair that rests right before the window where we giggled while fumbling with our rings. Our paid-too-much-for fixer upper is paid off now,  free and clear… And the remodeling we began way back when is long done, along with many other projects since. So long done in fact that we are probably even due for a bit of a redecorate.  We have a wonderful child, we’ve both changed jobs, and I’ve even changed careers, abandoning my life as a tech to pursue my dream to be a writer. So far, that has worked out well. And, as beautiful as E K was on October 31, 1987, in my estimation she just keeps getting prettier every single day.

And, you know what else? My heart still goes “pitter-pat” whenever she enters the room – just like it did that fateful and fortunate day back in 1986 when I turned a corner in a tech center and found her waiting…

Yeah, yeah, okay… I can hear you screaming – “Sheesh, Sellars… All right already… Enough with the sappy Hallmark Channel^TM crap… What does this have to do with food… Or was that just a ploy to get us here so you could throw down some kind of Nicholas Sparks inspired frou-frou on us?”

Well, in all honesty, no it wasn’t intended as a bait and switch. I just guess nostalgia has a way of creeping up on a person and taking over. But, we’ll talk about that  later…

So, the food…

Take a good look at the pictures from the wedding… You’ll see cake, chafing dishes filled with veal parmigiana, ham, rice… Plates filled with dollar rolls, cheese, condiments… But, what’s missing?

Well, I can easily understand if you are having trouble with the “where’s Waldo” scenario here, so let me refresh your memory just a bit… Remember earlier in this story when E K and I planned the menu and blew a wad of cash at the Honey Baked Ham® Company? Part of what ate up that chunk of change from our budget were the boxes of fancy hors d’oeuvres… Or, as the young man behind the counter called them, much to E Kay’s amusement, Whores Duh-Vores…

It was probably a solid month later when it dawned on us that all of those expensive mini quiches, bite sized meat pies, and unpronounceable little appetizer morsels never made it to the table that night. They were still nestled snug and chilly in their boxes, stacked neatly in the chest freezer downstairs… That was our final glitch for the evening, not that anyone even noticed…

Still, it opened a door and presented an opportunity we simply could not pass up… When lives  settled down once again over the following weeks, we set our plan into motion… We gathered our friends, filled the fridge with beer, wine – even a bottle or two of the bubbly – and baked those boxes of goodies…

We had our party… Even if it was several weeks late.

And now, sadly – in my way of thinking, at least – we have come to the end. Not of Brainpan Leakage, of course… I plan to bore you with many more stories of the lunacy that is my life. Nor is it the end of E Kay’s and my story…  It’s merely the ellipsis at the end of this particular chapter in a memory book that will hopefully just continue to grow for untold years to come.

I know that many of you have come to expect humor from me at every turn – be it silly, dry, acerbic, or even hidden… I hope that I was able to inject some of that into this tale, and into your lives with it. I realize, of course, that some – maybe even a good portion – of this was sappy and sentimental. Well, I’m a sappy and sentimental guy, especially when I come down with a bad case of nostalgia. Don’t worry, I’m taking something for it and the doctors assure me it should clear up soon – although they say I will always be at risk for a sudden relapse, (or two or three), in the future. But, what I can definitely say about this attack of nostalgia is that in writing this multi-part answer to a frequently asked question I have been given a gift. While it may seem like nothing more than random babbling to some of you,  committing this slice of my life to “paper” has allowed me to relive something in much more depth and detail than the cursory re-tellings I’ve given in the past.

And, for that, those of you who asked the question that made this series of blog entries happen, have my humble and profuse thanks. You have given me something, that while it was there all the time, had been hidden behind better than two decades of day to day life, still in my heart but obscured from my view.

In any case, if the sentimentality here has managed to get your panties all in a bunch, just remember I warned you about it at the outset, so don’t bother to send any complaint letters…It won’t do you any good because I’ll just give them to E K, and trust me, you don’t want her answering them… (I keep telling you people she’s evil…)

Now… What with this little blog “mini-series” being born of a FAQ and all,  I suppose I should move along to the next question. So, as to the query about how our daughter came to be…

Well, you see, when a man and woman love each other…

Nah… On second thought I think I’ll just let you call the local high school and ask the biology teacher about that one.

More to come…

Murv