Blackmail

Yes, I do wonder sometimes why I am being blackmailed by all these boring Luna people, as if I did anything to them. It was very nice of Myrlena to explain to me what those words meant when actually she did not have to do that. She could have just said to look it up in the dictionary. I am sorry that she was embarrassed but I would have been too if I had been called upon to explain the sewage continually flowing from the mouths of Thomas and Raymond. I myself probably would have directed people to the dictionary in that situation. Fortunately no one asked me so perhaps they are more familiar with the colloquial English than I was at the time at age 14 with the colloquial Spanish. I had never heard such words at church or among church people so had no idea of the meaning and was seeing nothing in the context of the classroom with which to associate that. At least I did ascertain the meaning and thus prevented myself from repeating the sounds like a parrot without knowing what it meant. It is important to make sure you know what these words mean to avoid misusing them. I fail to see what that minor incident has to do with money or anything else. If the Luna people are imagining that I have some offshore deposit with which to pay them off they are sadly mistaken. I have no money for them. It is not like I am a manager of a translation company. If I were a megacorporation like McDonald's and the design of my coffee cup had precipitated burns then perhaps the deep pockets of corporate America could accommodate this but as for me I fail to see why this matters. The choice of words was his, not hers, so it wasn't her fault, and the cultural norms of that era say that it is not his fault because such behavior was typical among that high school peer group, so basically no one is at fault as far as I can tell. It was sort of strange that I was promoted to honors science shortly after that by Mr. Freund. Obviously there was no connection to that incident. I don't think that I ever discussed that with anyone at school after that. It would be embarrassing to repeat that conversation so obviously there was nothing else to say about it. I could apologize to Myrlena but she died so there is nothing else to say about that.