Max

Yes, I did think that it was rather crude and lewd of Max to deal so treacherously with me in that dirty tricks way. Fortunately for me, I do not have to listen to his yapping every week, only once a in a blue moon. When will this stupid men ever learn that I am a girl and thus not interested in engaging in combat with them? Obviously they are a bunch of ignorant backwoods know-nothings who never read a book in their lives. Don't they know that I was three years old when that happened? Don't they know that when we snuck into the bathroom that I suddenly realized "Oh! This is bad!" and ran out of the room and that obviously I am never going to do that again. There is no need for anyone else to say anything about that. I am sick and tired of hearing this coarse, vulgar men try to make points out of nothing. There is just nothing to that. Sorry. Get lost, losers, because you are barking up the wrong tree. You should be better than that but you are not so we are not impressed.

Sisters

Yes, it is bad enough to have a sister who is close in age, only two years apart, but to make matters worse our birthdays are only five days apart so that I am forced to share my birthday party with her and her vicious little meanie friends who include Ann Campbell, Cindy Bell, etc. Miserable is what my birthday usually was forever and ever. That is why it boggles the mind that the stupid Wilson girls were jealous of us for getting to share our birthday party. They said they wished their birthdays were close together so they could have a party together. They must be crazy. Don't they realize that everyone treats us like Siamese twins, as if I were a physical attachment of my vicious witch little sister? We get in the car and Sammy says "Hello Candi and René. How are you, Candi and René?" as if we were a single unit and only one of us need reply. I think I did complain about this and it came back around to me that Sammy refuses to acknowledge my separate identity. Well, what do you expect from such a nuisance as C-student Sammy who flunked first or second grade? I certainly don't expect anything from them. They expect me to ship them a boatload of money for their projects and yet they always treat me like garbage. So obviously Sammy has not heard from me for years and years. Because if they don't care, why should I?

The Housekeepers' Underground

Thanks very much but I am not interested in being plugged into the Latin maid/housekeeper underground of Southern California. Yes, I suppose that these maids probably are up-to-date on the celebrity gossip grapevine long before regular white folks like me have heard even a hint of it. Nevertheless, I really do not care if I am not up to the minute on what is going on behind the scenes at Cher's house or Maria's house or whatever. Those poor little rich girls who live in deluxe mansions have a lot more problems than I do, that's for sure. However, I cannot be cluttering my mind with all their problems. What is on TV or in the occasional newspaper or magazine is a lot more than I care to know to start with so I don't think that I want to ever hear again from Stacy, a Latinaish New Yorker who formerly worked as a housekeeper before marrying her hillbilly lowlife husband from North Carolina. Cleaning fluids are abundantly stocked on grocery store shelves if I ever need that so no reason for this garrulous discussion. Yes, I suppose that work as a maid would qualify me well for wife and mother to a low-class moonshine bootlegging bum who wants me to do all the housekeeping chores and raise the kids and fetch the viddles and shoo the hogs away from his shack-home while he is busy cooking up some "dough" on the old gadget. Nevertheless, that is just not who I am. Sorry.

Small Talk

It is very hard to make small talk with boys, especially with idiot boys like Bobby Bueno. I remember once we were talking and he was saying something about girls that he likes and I made some comment which he interpreted as me trying to be like a guy discussing girls with him. I don't know why this keeps coming around back to me as if I were trying to be a boy, as if I were psycho-trash Chastity Bono and my mother was sex siren Cher. Ha ha ha! Not at all. One way to solve this problem is to never talk to boys. That way I will manage to avoid yet another backstabbing slashing from the Bueno riff-raff and their demon-possessed Panamanian witch. Still, that solution creates additional problems in trying to meet a mate. How can I get to know a boy when I cannot even talk to one, when they all lend undue importance to the lies of Bobby? It is impossible. I might as well be single and resigned to a life of nothing much.

Depression

Yes, I may be depressed at times but one thing to never ever do would be to write a letter to the newspaper seeking advice from that columnist in El Salvador. Her name was Maria and it was she who answered the "Cartas a Maria." Those poor people certainly do have a lot of problems but the answers were not that great either. Sometimes the answers were so bad they were funny as in laughable. I am not sure that any newspaper column could solve such serious problems. It is quite possible that there really was no Maria. No last name was ever given. Perhaps it was just a team of people who took turns answering the letters. Some answers were better than others for sure. But still (and I am not referring even obliquely to any moonshine still but rather to the fact that your weak and feeble arguments are not even remotely persuasive and my well-thought-out and well-supported opinion remains unchanged and unmoved as ever), also sometimes the answers were funnier than the problems, not that I can recall any specifics now. It was just the impression I got from reading the newspaper a few times in high school but that was a long time ago and I no longer remember anything about that nor do I care to revisit the subject of Maria.

Panama

It might seem funny that all the Central American countries have a nickname except for Panama, but then again we must remember that originally Panama was not really part of Central America. Panama, the isthmus, was originally part of Colombia in South America so their history was always very different from the rest of Central America. They have some Indians also but not the same tribal groups or different languages or costumes and not so much blended. They are more purified Spaniards down there bloodline wise probably. I do not really know much about Panama. Sherri Turnbull (MK-Panama) probably knows everything about Panama, given that she thinks that she knows everything about everything but I really do not care what Sherri Turnbull thinks she knows about Central America or China either for that matter. There is no reason for me to let the ghetto trash Turnbulls intimidate in their crude and foul-mouthed way. All of this turmoil is usually the tip off that Panama riff-raff have something to hide, some deep dark secret that necessitates trashing me first so that no one will ever think to ask what their emotional problem is anyway.

Running?

Who me? Run for president? These people must be out of their minds. I was never interested in being a politician and trying to make people like me. After all, my diaries explain all about how everybody hates me and nobody likes me which thought occurs to me at times of depression for vague and not quite explainable reasons. Obviously these things are no secret as everyone has already ransacked my personal papers and thus I have to throw myself in the garbage so that you cannot profit from this theft of the trivial flotsam and jetsam of my boring humdrum everyday life or maybe that was the whole idea, to throw me in the garbage. This is not exactly a heartwarming story is it?

Honduras

That is sort of odd that they would try to pretend that we were from Honduras just because we had a record player. The only Honduran connection that I know of was David Davenport's mother who grew up a missionary kid in Honduras in maybe the 1940s. I would not know anything about that. It is not like she ever told us much about that. You would have to ask David about Honduras because I do not know very much. It does seem odd that the Smeyas would later move to Honduras after being in El Salvador. Why not move to Chile or Argentina for that matter? It is all the same to me, just another set of people to meet, another set of churches for them to serve, another variation on Spanish culture, etc. No reason for us to get involved in these internal political conflicts that do not really concern us. With the city power plants shut down at 6 p.m. to baffle Honduran bombers, we spent the evenings of the soccer war on the terrace listening to wartime broadcasts on the battery-powered shortwave radio. In both countries, the president's wife left the country with a suitcase carrying all of the country's money, or so we heard on the radio. So we do not really know very much about that, not being native Salvadorans. A lot of people were displaced during that conflict but I only know what I heard on the radio. Now the U.S. diplomatic people, they probably knew a lot about that but it is not like they would ever tell us very much. We might hear something through the grapevine or not but it really does not matter very much to us. We do not need to know very much unless of course a bomb were to fall in the backyard or something like that. Then we would be directly affected. Otherwise, our purpose was very different from theirs. Our mission was with the local church which is always going to be there, hopefully, regardless of the shifting tides of politics.

Tar Baby

Who was it that called me tar baby? I don't remember, my cousin maybe although I am not sure. Yes, Sambo's was an OK coffeehouse as far as food goes, a lot like Denny's, but the pictures on the walls were sort of a problem, very controversial if you stop to think about it long enough. I remember eating there as a child and seeing the pictures right out of a book that I read somewhere. Hmmm...

Well, my understanding of the story at a young age is not exactly the same thing as the NAACP opinion of Sambo's. Still, I cannot say that the disappearance of Sambo's is a bad thing. I am not really interested in being a book burning activist but also there is no overwhelming reason to rescue the story of Sambo from the oblivion of history.

Anyway, this is not an issue that I choose to crusade about, not being a crusader, at least not that kind of crusader. There are those who sued to get rid of Sambo's pictures painted all over the walls and their purpose was accomplished through various means, whether by legal or political means. So I am not going to criticize them for doing that even though it was not my issue in a personal sense. It was because those pictures inspired by colonial times do keep things stirred up in a racial sense.

Nevertheless, I need to remind everyone that I personally am not a tar baby and my name is not Sambo. It is not about me. I personally have no real connection to the issue of colonialism, a historical era that was pretty much over by World War II.


That said, I would argue for a more moderated view of colonialism as a product of its time and place in history and not necessarily bad in every sense of the word, something that despite its glaring mistakes was nevertheless the vehicle that God used to open the door for missionaries who took the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who would otherwise be as unsaved and hopeless as they ever were for centuries.

We cannot have the ignorant high-school dropout cousins running the history show. Most of the most vocal critics of historical colonialism are not even really Christians and have no clue what is in the Bible. They are clueless about what it meant.

Speaking of Phonographs

I am suddenly reminded that when I was growing up in El Salvador we had a small record player. I do not remember it ever gleaming in the moonlight. It was not one of those old-fashioned Victrola things with a tin ear. No, it was just a small record player that could be closed like a suitcase and it was given away or sold along with a few records, mostly children's records. When we left, we sold a lot of our furniture and stuff to Barbara and her creepy lecherous husband Oscar, an engineer who had a crude way of looking me over when I answered the front door. I wonder why Barbara chose to marry such a creep but it is not really my place to tell her. He did not do anything to me so it was just a vague impression on my part of him being not someone I would want to trust with anything personal. Barbara was a friend of my mother's somehow, I don't remember what the connection was, and they had one daughter. Anyway, I do not remember whether they took the record player and the records or what happened to it, who we might have given it to. Maybe someone else remembers this but I don't.

Picking A Fight?

Yes, that was not very nice of La Cruz to try to pick a fight with me, as if I ever thought much about her. It was actually Margot from Panama who had a fight with La Cruz in maybe ninth grade. I did not know either of them at the time and never discussed the issues with them. I do not now anything about that or why Margot was upset with La Cruz. I did once go to Margot's house to work on a homework project but I now live in the United States so neither one of them are part of my life now. Just because your last name is Cruz, that does not mean that you understand the true meaning of the cross or are even a real Christian. Anyway, it is not wise to think very much about high school issues after graduation. That is all over now and those people will never be part of my life again except maybe at high school reunions and that kind of thing if I ever go there again. I actually never think about high school very much because I never did fit in that world. When you live temporarily in another country you have to be always willing to let go of things and set down new roots somewhere else because we are only pilgrims in this world. We are only just passing through.

Yes, we cannot have these Banana Republic people arriving on the shores of the United States thinking that they can reassemble the terms of their cozy little military dictatorship in our country. We are the ones who should be setting the example for these ignorant Banana Republic people who have not learned how to live in a democracy. We cannot have all these Spanish people arriving here thinking that they are going to reclaim Texas land for the King of Spain. That is not what the United States is about. Here in our country we are ruled by law and order, not by vague claims of royalties.

A deed is a deed is a deed.

The Royalties

Yes, it is rather annoying to be surrounded by all these Canadian-British people who treat us U.S. citizens like dogs. It is hard enough to be a U.S. citizen living in a foreign country and adjusting to that culture which is at times quite crude and then we have these British-Canadians posturing and using us to further their colonial ambitions. I well remember in high school how political they were, how they would rather hobnob with the natives rather than U.S. people like me, and ignore us and even manipulate the native sentiments against us, because that is how they think. They think that the affections of the native people belong to them alone and that we U.S. whites are to be wedged out so that ultimately we just won't have a voice or anything to say in the management of world affairs. That is how that works. And yet we see the actual Canadian-British dogs, that hideous party girl Stephanie and the Whitaker trailer trash, and we are not impressed. If getting ahead on the global stage means descending to their riff-raff level then maybe it just would not be worth it. They won't really talk to us or give us a break because they have to be "better" even if they are really not. It is just the uppity game they play. We know that. So that's what that is all about.

Agriculture

I have no agricultural interests, obviously. I am never going to be running the farm. If there is some drilling there perchance it will not be my problem. There is no reason for me to be anxious and lose sleep over drilling issues. I am confident that technology may eventually advance to the point where drilling is not a problem to farming, ranching, wildlife, environment, etc. Maybe the technology has not caught up yet and maybe it has, but anyway these agricultural concerns are not my problem.

I noticed on the Internet that the Yearys are trying to foist their wicked witch Dolly, who now calls herself the "Agriculture Lady," onto me, as if there were any connection between myself and that horribly mean person who briefly roomed with me for two months. Dolly always was utterly obnoxious and I could not care less what she thinks about anything.

Interesting how Dolly was from San Jose, which as everyone knows is the armpit of the universe. Why are so many of these liars from San Jose? I just cannot imagine why anyone would imagine that San Jose is the center of anything.

Sure, there is lots of technology in Northern California but as we all know there is something amoral about technology. You cannot say that technology is right or wrong. It all depends on what you do with it. You can build a Tower of Babble if you want to but that does not make it right.

Miss Pill

Yes, the truth is that Miss Pill, that's short for Pilarinos, was never actually my teacher even though she was a teacher for two years at the missionary kid school. She was in New Orleans so she might have gotten washed away by a hurricane or something because we have not heard from them for years. She was nice, as nice as Greek can be, and she did teach us music class maybe sometimes but otherwise she was never my teacher. When I was in eighth grade Mrs. Grace Richardson, Canadian, was my teacher. Mrs. Richardson was a wonderful teacher. Everyone should have Mrs. Richardson for at least one year of their life as their teacher. Mrs. Pill was nice also and Miss Pill was Assemblies of God like us but the only year that I was at the MK school and Miss Pill was teaching there, Miss Pill was the little kids' teacher and I was in the big kids' class so Mrs. Richardson was my teacher. Yes, I vaguely remember someone trying to make some point about Miss Pill's Southern viewpoint on the Civil War and its politics as being somehow representative of AG beliefs in general. Not true. Miss Pill being from Louisiana had a unique idea about the causes of the Civil War being mainly economic, the industrial north wanting to take more manpower from the agricultural South or something like that, and Miss Pill was no fan of Abraham Lincoln, showing that Miss Pill generally represents the South on political matters but obviously does not represent the AG people who are not from Louisiana, let's just say. Mrs. Richardson, on the other hand, was proud of the fact that Canada was the end point of the underground railway during the days of slavery. Even so, Mrs. Richardson was wrong in saying that the loud praying in tongues that could be heard across the schoolyard sometimes was of the devil. No, it's not. So sometimes black is not equal to Pentecostal. You can be Pentecostal and pro-slavery like Miss Pill and anti-Pentecostal and anti-slavery like Mrs. Richardson. So obviously both teachers are wrong. Thus we see that sometimes politics and religions actually don't mix very well. It would be nice to think that religion logically flows into a neat little set of political boxes that work for everyone unfortunately in the real world it is a lot messier than that. Life is gray, as they say. Life is only black and white until you find out how much you don't really know and then you start to realize it is not that simple.

Crowing and Posturing

Yes, it is amazing how these big-shot muckety-mucks crow and posture and shake and quake and make you think that the sky is falling. Ha ha ha! If they make everyone think that we are illegal then everyone will be confused and think that it is so and eventually they could really make our lives miserable even when we are quite legal thank you very much. We are not interested in playing poker silliness. You want us to play a card no doubt but we would rather not show our hand at this time. It is none of your business.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Yes, it would not surprise me in the least if someone like Cori had cussed out her own mother. I would not be surprised at all. She is such a Jekyll and Hyde. One day she will be all nice and then suddenly something will set her off and she will blow up and start cussing and screaming so that you just tune out because Cori is so utterly stupid and then the next day she will be acting all nice and normal as if nothing had happened, as if she had never blown up and screamed and cussed. It is like Cori has two different personalities or people living inside her sick head. Or maybe it was Dolly who did that. I don't remember now. I would not be surprised if Dolly had done something like that either. They are both so weird.

Pictures

I am suddenly reminded of the time when I was working at the Haines City Herald. I was sent to take a photograph of some students at the high school, about 20 or 30 students who were involved in some program, I don't remember what it was. When we looked at the finished photos it was odd to note that one of the girls standing in the front row was holding her T-shirt stretched out almost as if pretending to be pregnant but of course she was only joking around. That was obvious even if not very funny. Oddly, only a few weeks or months before there had been some stories in the newspaper about the problem of teenage pregnancy in the school newspaper. I think we did use the photo because my editors did not nix the photo even though it was quite obvious. Maybe we should have scrapped it but we always were needing photos and pretty much used every photo we could get was used even if we had to go out of our way and drive all the way to the high school and back just to get one photo and a little cutline with info. I don't remember if there was even a story attached. If these students want to make some weird statement, it happens all the time, all these photos with people smirking and blinking and posing and whatever. If some teenage boys might have given her a bad time, although I am only guessing, then that is probably predictable. Teenage boys going through puberty can be terribly mean to girls, there is no question about that. And when you are talking about teenage boys who are redneck lowlifes living in Central Florida, then the odds are great that such a girl with such an attitude would be given a very hard time. I would not be surprised about that.

Your Point

I sort of understand your point but I do not appreciate your point being made at my expense. Sure, it is dangerous to make generalizations. Nevertheless, there is no need to finger me and make me the scapegoat for everybody else's garbage. After all, I am NOT your maid.

Yes, I do remember well that in high school some people were going on and on about what a great school it was and how people were so much nicer there and not a bunch of derelict drug addicts as with schools in the United States. Some people coming from the U.S. talked about how bad schools were back in the U.S. and some people from the U.S. also complained about being put into dummies classes automatically in our school because they would not be able to keep up with us. Sure, plenty of people down there were not all that nice and quite mean actually and there were plenty of dummies who might not be able to keep up in the U.S. So, yes, it is dangerous to generalize that way. You could really hurt someone.

No Connection

There is absolutely no connection whatever between us and Nora Lam. I don't know anything about that. I do remember hearing that some people were saying that her books were not exactly accurate, that Nora had distorted her life's story to some degree. She might have come out of Shanghai but she was not even born yet when my grandparents were there in the 1910s and 1920s so I don't see any connection at all to us. Sue Olen said something about the controversy of Nora Lam's "China Cry" book but I never read it so cannot comment intelligently. There would be no connection between my high school assignments and Nora Lam. Maybe I should read that stuff but have not really thought much about it. Sometimes when I hear bad reports about these high profile people I don't think about it very much. It is not my job to figure out whether Nora was right or wrong. It does not matter in the least to me. I do think that ultimately the truth will prevail. Even if Nora was wrong on some points, that does not discredit Christianity generally speaking. Sometimes we do get off on tangents and certain people get away with much more than they should and are careless in their personal lives. Still, the gospel which is the good news of Christ is a story about how God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever might believe on him would not perish but have everlasting life. This is true always regardless of the messes that some individual people might make.

Nora

Nora was the heroine of the 19th century play by Henrik Ibsen which did a lot for legitimizing the idea of divorce and women's liberation at a time when society was very strict about those things and the role of woman was very very limited. So we studied this play in Spanish translation in Spanish literature class as part of our study of European classics.

Obviously there is no connection between our discussion of European classic literature and the story of Nora Lam, the Chinese woman who in the 1950s or 1960s divorced her abusive husband and became a famous minister and author. I remember Sue Olen talking about Nora Lam but I do not remember what Sue said nor did I ever read any of Nora's books or know anything about her. I just have no clue about Nora.

I was just doing my homework. That's all that was about.

Duck Report

Yes, I think I remember that this type of duck is mentioned in Henrik Ibsen's famous play, "A Doll's House," which we read and discussed in Spanish literature class, in Spanish translation of course. For some reason, Nora in one of her speeches near the end of the play, when she has decided to leave her husband and children to find herself, likens herself to a duck. I don't remember much about our final report on this book. We all took turns so maybe someone else remembers this. Of course, the play came after the science report but there is no connection between the play and the science report.

Duck Report

Yes, I did skip over the details of duck mating, didn't I? Something about the way they exchange hoots or quacks to communicate as they court among the reedy plants along the river shore, one quack two quack. Enough said about that. After all, the main point of that particular report was the imprinting of the little ducklings that hatch afterward. There was something peculiar about this particular species of Canadian duck, something about the father duck actually functioning as the mother. Yes, it was something like that. So the mother duck lays the eggs and then flies away on vacation and the father duck stays behind and sits on the eggs until they hatch. Then when they hatch the father is the one who is there for the imprinting part and tends to the young hatchlings until they can fend for themselves as adult ducks joining the flock. Yes, this particular duck species is mentioned or alluded to in the famous play by Henrik Ibsen, "A Doll's House." So it can happen that the father is actually the mother because the little hatchling does not really notice. The little hatchling only knows the first thing that it sees when it is born. So it is quite possible that the hatchling is imprinted on by the male duck rather than the female duck. After all, we are only talking about a duck.

Which reminds me how interesting it was to watch the repartee on the TV show "Moonlighting." I cannot imagine how they think of all that stuff to say. I would never make it as a comedy script writer. I just don't get it. My mind doesn't work that way.

Ducks

Which reminds somehow of ducks, specifically the oral report I gave in Mr. Schaeffer's 10th grade biology class. It was about a certain species of ducks and how these ducks are imprinted upon birth. The first thing they see is their mother so to speak. So if a mistake occurs and the first thing they see is a human being then they are going to follow the human around thinking that is their mother. The first thing they see could be anything, a picture of a duck or some other animal perhaps. Yes, that was an interesting report that I gave in Mr. Schaeffer's class. I remember it well, or maybe I think I remember it although I am not really sure anymore what I said. I know that my report was on ducks but am I confusing my report with someone else's ducke report? I really don't remember.

Relatives

People are so crazy. Someone said that my relatives are siding with our wealthy relatives in New York. That's ridiculous. I don't have any relatives in New York at all. My great-grandmother was born in upstate NY or Pennsylvania depending on who you talk to but she moved to Ohio well before her marriage in 1899 so I cannot imagine that we could possibly have any relatives left in the Northeast by this time, and even if we did I doubt that they would be wealthy or important people, probably just some ignorant people who don't know what they are talking about like everybody else. The Moonies have a big mansion there in New York but obviously we are not related to them.

Stupid Spies

It it impossible to have an intelligent conversation with these stupid spies. They get little bits of this and that, they take it all out of context and then they construct a bizarre, gutter-brained theory that has nothing to do with the reality of my life and everything to do with your very very sick mind. Get real! You vile pervert! Just because I mentioned that the missionary families all had boys, meaning that I am complaining about there being no other girls at missionary family gatherings during my high school years, or else you heard about Dawn, and you construct some bizarre scenario about me being abnormally obsessed with boys, or else girls. You must be out of your mind, you disgusting psycho pervert! I wasn't talking to you and even if I were that is not what I said or even thought of. This is enough reason to never speak to you ever again in this lifetime, you filthy pig. In fact, you are the one who should be talking to a shrink, not me, because you are the one with a gutter in your brain.

Like I once told Cori, when she asked whether I had ever considered being a spy, I said that I would not make it in the spy world because I am not very good at keeping a secret. When I was four years old I could not resist telling my Dad that we got him socks for Christmas even though my mom told me not to tell. So obviously a spy career is not something that I ever thought of seriously. Why would I do that when I am a normal person with no serious problems requiring me to disappear into the underground for the rest of my life? I just cannot imagine why some people would want to blackmail me into becoming an FBI agent when I am not the person at my high school who went around talking about her plans to be an FBI agent. I am not the person who ever thought of that. It just does not make any sense.

Futile

All is futile futility. It is so easy for those pompous rich people to stand there on their pedestals casting aspersions on me after they have already engineered the destruction of me and anything that ever mattered. My life is over. There is nothing for me to look forward to but more years of meaningless existence until death finally takes me from this miserable life. There is no reason for me to care about anything they say or about those evil wicked witches they have appointed to heap scorn and disdain on my head, as if there were anything that I could do to prevent them from stabbing me in the back. There is just nothing for me in this life. If only I could have had a different life than this horrible one. Wouldn't it be better for them if I did not exist? But unfortunately my time is not over yet.

Royalty

Yes, that was sort of annoying when people kept saying that I looked like Fergie. I don't think I do. I don't see any similarity whatsoever between Fergie and myself. My hair is much darker than that. I think that my sister and cousin look more like Fergie than I ever did with their lighter red hair. I don't think that I would ever marry a prince of that ilk anyway, no insult intended to the royal family but I am just not that highly placed in terms of social ranking to ever even be introduced to such a wealthy and important person as a prince and, really, this is not a problem anyway. I am just fine without ever meeting a prince of that ilk. I can live long and happy without ever meeting the royalties and the same is true for most of the other people on this planet so I see no reason to get bent out of shape over nothing.

Irene Cool

Oops! I'm sorry. I forgot that Irene's lost name is actually Cool. It's Irene Cool. But Irene is married now so I would not have any idea what her married name is. Could be anything but it is probably not Boyd. I must have gotten those two Irene's mixed up.

Irene Boyd

Funny thing, when I was working at Lockman Foundation in California one of my co-workers was Irene Boyd who attends the Crystal Cathedral. She might have gotten fired while I was there but I am not sure what happened. She had a disagreement with the boss and she lost. I only remember that Irene often talked about her little niece who was a redhead. Irene commented about how her niece got way too much attention because of her hair color and that it was not healthy and Irene was concerned about that. Yes, I ought to know all about that. I don't need yappity-yap dog Irene to explain to me that hair color is no indicator of character, integrity, etc. It is very uncomfortable and bewildering to be treated so badly by such utterly stupid people. When you treat redheads so badly, you should not expect to get any reward or prize for being stupid. At least, that is my opinion.

Heirs

Yes, in a way it is sort of sad that my cousin David died before his mother and so he was not considered in dividing up the oil rights. That often happens when people die before their parents do. In order to receive your inheritance you have to be alive at the time. It certainly helps to be alive when the possession is transferred. People die young for various reasons, sometimes in infancy, and never inherit the rights that might have been theirs had they lived longer. So it is sad that there is not a percentage allocated to David but, oh well, we cannot make too much of that. So that is not a reason to go around killing your relatives so that your children will inherit a larger portion. I think there is something very un-Christian about that concept but since I am not in a position to do anything about it it really does not make any difference what I say. Lots of disgusting horrible people inherit boatloads of money and lots of very good people die never see a dime so certainly the possession of money is no indicator of the goodness or kindness of one's heart. Let us on be so simple minded on that point. Quite the contrary, it could mean the opposite, that you are a cruel and vindictive golddigger who trampled a lot of good people on your way to the top of the totem pole. The rain falls alike on the just and the unjust, as the Bible says.