Decades  Moomie, caught being silly.  I was at some kind of reunion   It was evening, and semi-familiar faces swam to and fro in the murky light.  The location was kind of a cross between someone's house  and a school building.  I had brought the spouse and boys with me, and they were having a fairly good time, moved off to do something on their own.  Then I saw him.      His hair was kind of sandy colored now, instead of dark brown.  It seemed to have benefited from Rogaine, but was cut shorter, in a spunky little-kid cowlicked kinda way.  I still recognized him.  It was my previously bigamous former husband.  I had no idea he would be there.      With a "hi" I hugged him, with no clue why.  Instantly as I embraced him, his height suddenly telescoped so that the hug brought my head right into the lap of his faded jeans.  When I let go, he was normal again.      He introduced me to his wife, someone I didn't know at all.  He had several children, three or four I suppose, and it didn't occur to me until I awoke that two of them might have been my former stepchildren.  The oldest, it was mentioned, had recently had his bar mitzvah.  I remember feeling proud for him.      As I stood in the doorway, a large blonde haired guy with an acne scarred face began to speak to me.  Like everyone, he seemed familiar, but I could not grasp his name or where I knew him from, but he nearly burst into tears as he told me I'd broken his heart, ruined him.  At some point in the evening, a thin black guy with ringleted hair and deep lines in his face flashed me a huge knowing smile containing a silver tooth.  If this was Curtis, my how he had changed.      More and more of these eerie faces passed me or stopped to talk to me.  I was dressed like Forrest Gump's mother in the powder blue dress, and that bothered me.      There was more, but it was lost in awakening.      A lot of my life has been a pendulum swing between self-loathing and feelings of superiority.  The stupid things I have done have brought me low.  There was a time when I'd save up every idiotic transgression and beat my pitiful rotten stinking useless self with them every minute of every day.  Over and over, I'd relive them all and tell myself what a jerk I was, what a fool, how worthless.  How could someone so inept, so bumbling, so stupid be allowed to live?  Just whose air was I stealing?  The next Einstein might not be getting enough oxygen thanks to the likes of me.  Then I'd make some kind of achievement and revel in it, bask in it.  See, I knew I was something after all.  But it wasn't merely pride.  When I was on an upswing I was better.  Smarter, faster, more capable than any of my peers.  When I made great grades, I looked down at the poor fools struggling to read, to grasp a concept.  How slow, how moronic of them.  Why, I could think circles around those clueless zombies.  When I was a spiritually enlightened Mormon girl, oh how much better than everyone I was.  My testimony was so strong, why, I could convert a thousand with one talk, I bet!  You could see the godliness in my eyes, oh yes.  I was bound for the Celestial Kingdom, no doubt about it.  And oh those poor pitiful souls who won't accept the truth.  They are going to be so dissatisfied with their kind of half heaven, their B- existence.      Heh, if anyone was ever ready for a kick in the ass and a wake-up call...      Well, if I were still inclined toward self-loathing, I'd hate myself over all of the above.  Good thing I'm not.  A little self-forgiveness goes a long way.  I was an ill human being, suffering from abuse and neglect.  It's over.  It has been for well over a decade now.      Funny how it is to be at that age where you can measure things in decades.  I told Brooklynguy the other day that it has been two decades since I last rode a motorcycle.  Two decades.  People are voting who were born the year Uncle Jackie last took me for a spin.      Speekina decades, I have the opportunity to buy a computer that is well over a decade old.  It's very machine-looking, I mean, like industrial.  Heh, like Army equipment.  No molded plastic, no ergonomics of any sort.  Just utilitarian steel.  Now, I took computer science in school during that same time, and I remember being taught Tandy, IBM, and Apple.  I don't recall any of those looking like this thing, though.  I haven't fired it up yet.      Remember that kidney theft thing I mentioned a few days ago?  That link at the bottom otter help out debunking that nonsense.  -- Spring  link o' the day: c|net Urban Legend Archives