|
2001-07-13-8:59 p.m. Today in Sa-land our theme is paranoia. In the past few days, several victims of extreme paranoia have presented themselves to me. The first victim was a friend who was convinced that one of her coworkers had betrayed a confidence about another coworker to that person. I encouraged her to confront the alleged backstabber, which she did and was confident, based on that discussion, that her trust had not been breached. So, that one was a case of temporary paranoia brought on by monthly hormonal imbalances and was easily overlooked. The next victim presented herself in the guise of my friend on the east coast. After having read an entry or two wherein I referred to her actual state of residence and the nature of her employment, she felt that I had revealed enough information about her that she might be recognized by coworkers and clientele. How they would have found this diary is beyond me but in the interest of preserving peace and friendship, I edited out any references to her state, the general category of her job, the type of location of her job and anything else that she may have found to be unsettling. As a bonus 2-for-1, my friend was also paranoid that my �prot�g� might somehow happen onto the diary page, become offended and report me to my superiors at work. OK. Let�s forget for the moment that I have not named any names, those of actual people or of my employer, since when is it legal for your employer to punish you for things you do away from their place of business that have no bearing on them? Also, I think they would view it as a personal issue between two people who happen to work in the same place. If I have to, I�ll put on that disclaimer about it all being fictional characters and any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental. The third and most recent victim was my prot�g� herself. It seems someone stepped on a packet of catsup on her porch thus spraying her front door with its contents. Using the most convoluted thinking imaginable, she surmises that some children in the area perpetrated this deed, incited by their mother as a result of her supposed anger over their having been told by the prot�g�s boyfriend not to run their skateboard into his car. Got that? As I said, I have no idea how she arrived at this scenario but she seemed intent upon believing nothing else. I pointed out that it was summer and kids will be kids but she remained unswayed. I had decided to chalk this ridiculousness up to Friday the 13th and maybe the alignment of the planets when she asked me if she could look at the technology store ad from my newspaper. She explained that she was thinking about setting up her camcorder to tape her door surreptitiously and catch these culprits when she realized that the tapes only last for 2 hours so she was looking for other surveillance options in the ads. I took this opportunity to point out that that was a fairly expensive measure to take for an incident that may never happen again. She replied with a cold stare and the equally chilling �What if it does.� I let it go at that but I couldn�t help thinking to myself, �All of this over a package of catsup? It�s not like they took a large, economy-sized bottle and covered the entire door in the stuff. Just clean it off and keep moving!� Paranoia. That�s our theme today. **Disclaimer: All characters in this diary are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, real or imagined, is purely coincidental and unintentional.** |
