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 9 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: Clink! Clank! Oh, Murv!

Apparently, I perform well under pressure, even when it comes to mathematics…

Yes… The ring was exactly, and I do mean exactly, where my advanced calculations had said it would be. I didn’t even have to get dirty looking for it. I simply stood on an upturned 5 gallon bucket, removed two screws from a vent cover on the duct work, and there it was, winking at me in the dim light as if to say, “Whee! That was fun, let’s do it again!“

Needless to say, I ignored the ring’s request, replaced the vent cover, and returned upstairs. I also made it a point to show my mother-in-law the ring so that she would know the crisis had been averted, and more importantly, that I was not nearly as big an idiot as she imagined me to be. To this day I’m not really sure she was convinced…

Oh, and before I go any further I need to address a couple of things…

First, my apologies to Z Z Top for snagging one of their song titles for this blog entry. But, I think you’ll see why I did it if you keep reading…

Second, if you look closely at the picture above and on the right, you will notice that E K appears to have a grin on her face… In fact, it is something almost resembling a laugh. Well, that’s because it is. A laugh, I mean. Although you can’t see my face in this photo, rest assured, I was desperately trying to stifle a guffaw myself. It seems our rings were in a mood that evening. Not only had E Kay’s wedding band taken an unscheduled excursion through the HVAC duct work, we  even had ourselves another “ring mishap” right smack in the middle of the ceremony. Scott, (visible on the right), had handed me E Kay’s ring. Erin (remember Erin?) had handed E K my ring. Both of us, at his behest, had handed the respective rings to E Kay’s father, (the guy in front of us performing the ceremony), so that he could bless them… When he handed them back to us,  each at separate times as the ceremony called for, somehow I ended up with my own ring to slide onto Kat’s finger. Well, my ring being larger, obviously, this wasn’t that much of an issue. However, as the logical progression continued, moments later E K ended up with her own ring to place  on my finger and we tried desperately to make a surreptitious swap without letting on, but ended up getting tickled…

But, let’s step a few minutes back in time… (Yeah, don’t you wish you could do that for real? Me too.)

So, here we are, instantly back in the recent past… Well, it was recent past then… Now it is… Well, you know what I mean…

At this point I have recovered the fugitive wedding ring and I am feeling fairly proud of myself over such a grand accomplishment. However, since the clock didn’t stop during the mini crisis, we are at T minus 15 at this point… E K is still in the bedroom making herself too gorgeous for words, or as has been my personal contention for years, desperately trying to pry open the window that had been painted shut by the previous owners in order to make her escape. She maintains that my theory simply is not true, but when we went to replace that window during our continued  remodel several months later, I found claw-like fingernail gouges in the woodwork that looked suspiciously like they had been made by a human being with petite little feminine hands. From all appearances they seemed to have been made while she was attempting to dig her way through the wall.

With evidence like that, you tell me… What would you think?

But yeah, I digress…

We were coming up on zero-hour and fast. People had been arriving for several minutes, and our tiny house was now full, and even overflowing onto the front porch. In fact, it became obvious that there was a bit of an exodus occurring right before my eyes. It was at this particular point when I realized that I had started to sweat more than just a little. At first I thought it was simply because I was the groom and it was my job to sweat profusely immediately prior to the ceremony, however it was soon brought to my attention that everyone else was sweating too. Given that they weren’t standing in my shoes, there had to be something else going on…

You see, as I outlined in the earlier installment, “Mahwage: The Wedding Suit,” not only had the 2008 startup of the Large Hadron Collider screwed with the fabric of time and space, effectively f*cking up clocks on 10/31/87, apparently it had also temporarily shifted the entire planet on its axis, returning us from the beautiful fall weather we had been experiencing, (since, after all, it was autumn), to something more closely resembling mid-summer.

Yes, what I am saying is that  it was unseasonably warm… Way, way unseasonably warm. And when combined with all those bodies milling about in an enclosed area, as well as a half dozen medium-sized cans of Sterno flaming away beneath chafing dishes, along with a couple of crock pots set on high… well, it was just plain sweltering in the house. Not a problem.  Easy to fix. I would just turn on the A C…

… Uh-huh… Yeah… Problem…

And said problem is yet another reason why we paid way too much for our “fixer upper”. I slid the switch on the thermostat, and the A C clicked on. It then proceeded to make a groaning noise, followed by a clank, punctuated by a sputter, underlined by a screech, and then  when it was fully satisfied with itself, the damn thing settled in to a loud, not quite right sounding whirr. All well and fine, except that whirring was pretty much all it was good for at that point. Uh-huh… The compressor was all but shot, and the coil was hot on its heels… And, while that pun wasn’t intended, it is entirely accurate… The A C was blowing hot air…

But, even though the air flowing from the vents felt more like the product of the furnace than the A C, at least now it was moving…  Sorta… Well, a little bit…

So, in a last ditch effort to adjust the comfort level, we ran around the house and pried open every window we could so as to assist in the circulation. There were still more people coming for the reception following the ceremony proper, so heat exchanging was definitely going to be an issue. This process took a little elbow grease, because remember, the previous owners had been very good about painting the windows shut for us. While that thought was awfully kind of them, I was less than excited about it right then…

But, let’s move on to those stockings…

I make absolutely no secret of the fact that I am not a “boob man”. This is probably one of the reasons Erin, (remember Erin? By the way, is anyone sensing an “Erin” theme here yet?) Anyway, this is probably why Erin and her most bodacious and prominent chest didn’t enrapture me as it had done for the other red-blooded males back at ComputerTrend. I mean, nothing against breasts… They’re nice… Even fun to play with now and again… (No, I never played with Erin’s… Sheesh, you people…) But, to put it very simply they aren’t the physical feature that first attracts my attention when it comes to the appreciation of the female form… (As you can see, I am desperately trying to apply some political correctness to this part of my rambling, and failing miserably in the process, so I’m afraid I’ll just have to abandon the attempt…) The long and short of it is this… I’m a leg man. Nothing titillates, (yeah, odd word choice, considering), me more than a woman’s legs. I’m all about the whole stocking-encased, silky thigh, back of the knee, shapely calf, well-turned ankle appendage ending in a stiletto heeled pump…

Uhm… Excuse me just a moment…

…Okay, I’m back now…

What? I was getting more coffee… Jeez… First Erin, now this… Y’all are worse than me… Give me a break.

Okay, so let’s get back to the story… So, yeah, everyone has their turn-on’s, and shapely female legs are mine. So, my lovely bride, both knowing this fact and being in possession of a fantastic pair of legs, (yes, hers, not someone else’s), had picked out a pair of sexy, white, back-seamed stockings to go with her dress and high heels. Trust me… I was not complaining about this fact at all…

Now… I have to divert from the storyline once more in order to pass along a bit of pertinent information. E K was, at that time in her life, habitually late for everything. She still is, but to nowhere near the degree she was back then… Remember the part in an earlier installment about us annoying one another? Well, there’s one for you… As it happens, I’m habitually early. See the rub? I am pointing this out because much time has passed with all that A C mucking about and window opening handjive.

Therefore, much to my chagrin, we have now arrived at T plus 20 or so… Yeah, the mission profile has been altered and I didn’t get the memo.

And so, the tableau is set up thusly… E K is still in the bedroom. I am standing in the middle of the living room with all of our friends and family, doing the only thing I can think to do, which is shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head. My sister has already made a trip or two back to the bedroom to check on E K and has assured me that she is neither sick, nor has she escaped.

We continue to stand and/or sit, as the case may be, around the living room and stare at one another. Every now and then I would shrug once more and smile nervously. By now my best man, Scott, has punched me in the arm enough times that I am convinced I will be needing to head to the emergency room for an X-ray and cast once the ceremony is over… Got all that? Good, because here goes…

Finally, we heard the bedroom door click and swing open. A hush fell, almost like it would in an actual chapel. It must be something to do with “Bride Radar” or some such, you got me, all I know is it got real quiet, real fast… Anyway, from my vantage point I can see down the hallway and slowly, but surely, an absolute vision comes into view. E K was beyond stunning and my breath literally caught in my chest. However, since I realize full well that during this series I have gone on and on and on about how gorgeous  my wife is, in my eyes at the very least, I’ll try to refrain from doing so for a minute or two.

E K smiled and began walking toward me. I smiled back at her, and as she stepped into the living room her heels clacked across the hardwood floor, sharp and obvious in the hush that still gripped those in attendance. She glanced around at everyone and said in a shy voice, “Sorry… I guess we’re ready now.” I stepped quickly to the “altar,” (as seen in the first picture up top, the “altar” was the yet unfinished window at the South end of the living room.)

My plan, of course, was to wait for my lovely bride to make her complete entrance and allow her to be the center of attention for a moment, just like it is supposed to happen at a wedding. She picked up on the cue and ventured farther into the room as she walked slowly toward me.

I continued smiling at her, but noticed that her own smile was quickly fading. In fact, her eyes had grown wide and her face had begun to twist into a look of surprise, fear, consternation, concern, calculating thought, and about twelve other similar expressions… And, these bizarre looks were being displayed all at once. Without missing a single, dainty step, as if perfectly choreographed, she turned smoothly on her heel and continued her march in the complete opposite direction, making a sharp right turn into the hallway from whence she had come, as she called over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”

A pair of seconds later we heard the bedroom door open, and then quickly shut. We all looked around the room at one another, totally dumbfounded. This was the last thing anyone had expected, and it once again had me wondering if E K was trying to claw her way out the back window in a bid to seek freedom. Of course, customarily the groom is the one to get cold feet, but since we had already been setting a precedent throughout our entire relationship for re-enacting scenes from movies that hadn’t even been made yet, there was always the chance that this incident was going to be plucked from our lives and inserted into Runaway Bride.

For a moment, I considered sending my sister back to the bedroom with a bottle of scotch  and a tumbler. My hope was that a shot or two would bolster my maybe-soon-to-be-wife’s courage, but before I could set that plan into motion, Kathy reappeared, her smile now beaming as she once again muttered a quick “sorry about that,” and made her way through the assemblage to stand by my side.

It wasn’t until we were preparing for bed later that evening… Yes, later that evening… Not night, not the next morning, that evening… Trust me, we’ll get to the “why” in relation to that in just a bit. Anyway, it wasn’t until then that I found out what that whole little back and forth dance was all about. And, I only found out because my bride suddenly announced to me that she had lost all feeling in her legs…

You see, it’s like this… While me not having a suit was a major screw up…  I readily admit that… It seems I wasn’t the only one who was misfiring in the grey matter department. E K… Yes, E K, had screwed up too. When she purchased the stockings to go with her dress, she had thought she picked up a pair of thigh-highs, when in fact she had picked up stockings. As in stockings that require a garter belt. A garter belt which was still packed away in a box in the basement, because we had only just moved in and were woefully behind in unpacking due to the remodeling activities. So, even if she had asked me to retrieve the lacy accoutrement for her, I probably wouldn’t have been able to actually locate it amidst the boxes until sometime during the spring of 1994, which obviously would have been just a tad bit late. She knew this… Remember, like I said before, she’s a smart cookie…

So, in a MacGyverish gambit, she had attempted to make the sheer fabric stay in place with a bit of  cellophane tape… Unfortunately, by the time she made it less than a half dozen steps into the living room, the stockings began to fall, hence the sudden horrified look upon her face.

But, why had she lost the feeling in her legs? Well, here’s the thing… Her own personal lightning fast calculations in the face of an impending crisis had led her to the only solution available within the confines of the bedroom, and time allotted upon her hasty retreat… For the entire evening she had been holding up her stockings with heavy duty rubber bands wrapped around her thighs… Now, that’s what I call commitment to a cause, for you see, I happen to know my bride had other actual thigh high stockings in the bedroom. I know this because she used to buy Leggs stockings mail-order by the dozen. Now, I doubt if she had any that were white, although she may have. I don’t actually make a habit of inventorying my wife’s undergarments.  That would just be… Well… Weird… Harmless, but weird… Anyway,  my point here is that I’m willing to bet there were some in “nude,” or some other hosiery shade that would have worked just fine with her dress.

But of course, that’s my E K for you… Once she sets her mind to something you best stay out of her way, because she is going to see it through come hell, high water… Or even sagging stockings…

But, as I said, this little tidbit of information came to my attention much later in the evening… I’m afraid this story isn’t over quite yet…

More to come…

Murv

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