Which Reminds Me

Oh, that's nice. Ok, so Heather Caton, as president of the World Genesis Foundation, helps to organize summer camping programs in Romania. And also we see that Peter Moon's ramblings got him a position as partnerships director for the Foundation. And all this somehow connected to the time travel research of David Anderson, whose connection to the Scotty Kid Andersons of Washington, if there be any, is not known to us. Such occult matters are not high on our priority list of matters deserving of our attention. Maybe someday we will make note of your existence but then again there is no guarantee that we will have pause from mundane matters of daily living to ponder the mysteries of the ages. Oh, thanks Angie for sharing all your Romanian viruses. We can easily imagine that ministering in such Eastern Bloc countries would pose unique challenges but apparently there is more to that than anyone could have originally anticipated.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I certainly do not enjoy being harassed by creditors. Shouldn't there be a law saying that you cannot interfere with my ability to earn the money with which to replay my debts? Even if I wanted to pay that off I am so deeply underwater at the moment. You must be so much enjoying having the slaveowner prerogatives of the creditor that you would do anything to trip me up one way or another rather than to relinquish your stranglehold on my life. Anyway, how did you Kansas homebodies get admitted to the Union? Does make you wonder.

Which Reminds Me

It does seem strange that there would be so much obsessing about the "five" clique, whatever that is supposed to mean. I don't remember anyone saying anything positive about the "five" clique at Oakland Park. Mostly I just loathe stupid cliquey people so whatever. I have zero respect for stupid cliques of any number, four, five, six, seven. Whatever.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, we really must be more compassionate in regards to the mental illness of Dawn. She must have been completely out of her mind to want to kiss those obnoxious little twits, Bobby and David. They really should not be encouraged to think that they would ever get a kiss from me. That would really throw all the proper wiring of relationships completely out of whack.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, we all noticed Dawn's peculiar recipe for pickled butts, but we do not wish to repeat that disagreeable scheme. Given what we now know about these people and how they think, we have since then learned that we should not be expecting these little children to respect their elders, myself being older than all of them but really not your mother. We learned that we should just let these people act out their basest and most wicked impulses and reap the consequences of sin without offering any advice or guidance that would ultimately be rejected anyway due to their ying-yang Canadian political orientation. We have learned that nothing we say or think matters to them in the least and that all our good intentions matter not. Only what can be used against us will be recalled. We have learned that our presence on this planet is not welcome and that the sooner we can die the better because then they won't have to feel obligated to feed us and have chairs for us to sit in.

Which Reminds Me

If you have ever gone out to eat with Susie, paying your own check, you might remember how she always admonishes everyone to not pay the tip with pennies. That is because she at one time in high school worked as a waitress and always remembers how insulted she was when people unloaded their pennies on the table as the tip, leaving Susie with the strenuous effort of lifting all of these pennies off the table, and then all those pennies make your wallet feel like a lead weight in your purse, and your shoulder bag, if you use one, might even make your shoulder a bit sore, but at least you have your hands free. If you use one of those hand clutch bags of course you always have to be grasping it in your own hand. But anyway I always use a shoulder bag. Even so, I don't quite understand why Susie feels so insulted about that. To the bank it is just all the money—pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, paper. Paper beats rock, but that is a whole different story. We learned the rock paper scissors game in high school. Oh, did I produce scissors to your rock so that you imagine yourself entitled to crush me? I don't remember that clearly. Anyway, paper certainly is lighter and more valuable at the same time, but to the bank it is all about money. Money makes the world go round.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, we really don't mind paying near $20 to try a medium pizza with at least pepperoni, adding maybe mushrooms, sausage, olives, from that famous multi-colored pizza restaurant in San Francisco.

That said, we are not so much interested in connecting with the Italian rioters of San Francisco who in the 1950s made a huge mess of everything. Even though the Italians of San Francisco may well deserve to be prosecuted for crimes of disturbing the peace and also the practice of slavery, perhaps their money and power connections made it difficult for law enforcement to get a handle on what actually happened. They were certainly not friends of us, but we are not in a strong position of being able to do something about that, given that we labor under a slave contract that allows them to not pay us a dime for all these services and hard work that we have been delivering. Something is wrong with this picture.

Why is the CIA subsidizing the criminal activities of these evil mafia trash Italian whiners? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I know, I really wasn't going to say anything about Amy's secret affairs with Michael Jackson, but then again the way that everyone is making such a big to-do about that makes me think that maybe there really is more to that than I had originally thought. So what are you suggesting? That we should add this item to the growing list of really annoying things about Amy, who is perhaps overdue for a serious reality check? Not to be mean but, anyway, we are not Foursquare so the name of Aimee is really not that special to us that we would grant special powers to clueless whiners named Amy.

Someone has perhaps confused us with the Andersons or the Goslings, who were the only Foursquare missionaries in El Salvador. When we left the country, we gave our job of translating letters to the Gosling girls, Charlene and Becky. Those were some cute letters, but if their translation skills were not such as to merit being retained in that position, we really can't blame the school system for dropping them. Not meaning to be mean, but I wouldn't want to stake my entire reputation on those clueless blockheads being the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Our family has always been AG, so you really don't know much if you are thinking Foursquare. Upon doing our family research we learn of the existence of my Dad's Uncle Sam, whose family is apparently Foursquare. Oh, I didn't know that. Well anyway, I don't even know these people exist so obviously we can get along just fine without those Blockheads.

Which Reminds Me

We don't have any Italians in our family tree but it was interesting to learn upon doing my genealogy research to learn that actually my Dad has some cousins who are maybe half-Italian because obviously they could not have gotten the Italian thing from us. We have no information to share on the subject of Italians. You will need to find someone who knows what they are talking about because, anyway, I have no idea how why they would be imagining that I would want to socialize with their Calabrian Italian cousin Joannie. I really have no idea who these people are, just because their last names are in alphabetical proximity to mine in high school roll call doesn't mean very much to me in the big picture scheme of things.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, why are you imagining that it is my job to explain the presence of the Calabrian monstrosity in our high school class? How did that happen? I just have no idea. In 10th grade she may have boasted of being well informed of and/or well connected to the moneyed establishment of San Francisco, but that was part of a discussion of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, which was much in the news at the time, directed more at our English teacher, Miss Marken, than any of the rest of us. Although she sits directly in front of me in the alphabetical order of things, she coyly avoids speaking to me directly. She imagines that I am so fascinated with overhearing what little worthless dabs of conversation she may exchange with the Italians nearby such as Carmen, and thus later in life she and the Italian cohort of brownies will ride herd on poor clueless white people such as myself. Thus, I studiously avoid any display of interest in anything they might say. Why should I voluntarily serve up my own head on a platter? No, I will not make it easy for them to do that to me. I will just not be available.

Which Reminds Me

Why are these people talking as if the woman can only get money from her husband? Or also father? No earnings potential for a single woman, thus a total waste of energy and effort to lift a finger, just to function as a soulless coin-operated vending machine. This emphasis starts to sound like the cult of Baail, not really Christian, which is so annoying, in which case we would ignore the need for money if we could, but then again we need money to live. Money makes the world go round, and yet something is blocking the wheel of that. So we are stuck between the now and the not yet.

Which Reminds Me

That was sort of weird, how Ramona or that other person was praying for my pending marriage to Carman. But of course, obviously, that could never happen because I could never concur in asking for such that. I am so NOT interested. We once attended a concert and he does put on a good show bopping around in his flashy glitzy Italian Vegas way, but that's all there is, just one concert that we attended with some people. There is just nothing else to talk about in that line of thinking.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely recall that Ramona Mojica was a co-worker of my mother's many years ago in Miami. I remember talking to her and that other person a few times. For some reason they often talked about Carmen, that Italian singer from New Jersey, as if they are very obsessed with him. He is a good singer and wrote some good songs but I haven't heard much about them lately. Do they still live in the area? Maybe you could ask my mother whether she has hard recently from Ramona because I really have nothing to say about them.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, what was the name of that guy at our church who was a singer on cruise ships? He would be gone for weeks at a time and then reappear. Eventually he married Winnie and they moved to Atlanta, but that was so many years ago, at least 20 years ago. I just have no idea what those people would be doing nowadays or why I should care about that.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I suppose that now you will be expecting me to say something about Rafael Carias, of whom not much is known, just that during high school he sat directly behind me in the alphabetical scheme of things. I think that I heard that he now lives in Canada but I really cannot offer any additional information about that.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, we did notice, upon doing some thorough research, that my great-grandmother's uncle Edmund was married to Sara Jane De France, an eminent name in Pennsylvania history, but in our generation we have no idea who these people are or why we should care about that. Only upon reading great-grandmother's diaries do I learn that she was born in Pennsylvania. Oh, I didn't know that. When I was very young I just thought that everyone was from California, but obviously now we know it is more complicated than that. The name of James C. Smith appears somewhere in the paperwork but I have no idea who that person might be or why the Smiths imagine themselves related to me. I just have no idea who these people are.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, upon perusing the globe, we see that there are several locations that may be designated "Monte Blanco," not only a suburb of Chile, although the mountain is actually located in Bolivia, (so why mention that in the Chilean national anthem?) but also Honduras, Mexico, the Alps, etc. But even so, we are only aware of one mountain designated "Caraiman." Which mountain would you choose?

Which Remins Me

We hiked to the top of the Boqueron volcano, which takes about four hours of steep uphill walking, which will mean sore leg muscles for a couple of days afterward, and then several people decided to do the extra hike of climbing down to the bottom of the crater, which takes another hour or two. Carol was one of them. She challenged me to race her, but I declined to participate in a race to the bottom. I had had enough climbing already. Not to be mean but I really don't need to be making some cheapskate points about bottom feeders, so I saved my energy for the walk home.

Which Reminds Me

During high school in El Salvador, I was taking piano lessons for about one year from that Baptist lady (What was her name? I cannot recall) who, it was said, attended the same Baptist church to which the Sanchez family belonged. Carol later said something about how that lady was causing problems for her family but I really didn't understand what that was about or what actually happened there. I never attended the Sanchez church. I never discussed with my piano teacher what was going on with the Sanchez family. I can't really speak to that issue.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I suppose that you would not be so politically incorrect as to comment on Mrs. Walker's lousy book, a history of AG missions in Latin America which contains many odd wordings and mistakenly places my family in the Dominican Republic, a complete lie. In the chapter on El Salvador, where we lived for eight years, we are nowhere to be found. Weird. Didn't I graduate from high school there? Mrs. Walker said ominously that they were not going to be taking me with them. And yet I feel entirely indifferent to that. Anyway, I wouldn't want to be held responsible for the snarky books written by the Walker whiners. What would you be expecting from someone's ugly stepmother?

Which Reminds Me

Yes, we heard that Charles is the new voice of Paul. Ok, fine, whatever. That's nice. But we are no longer living in California so there is no reason to be expecting us to go there again, especially as we have not heard any expressions of a financial nature that would be worthy of being considered trustworthy. Leg pullers are such a nuisance and they always think it so funny when actually NOT.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I do think that it would be sort of gratifying to drive a stake right through the eyeballs of Candy Bennett, just to stop all this nocie, but that would just be gratuitous violence without any redeeming value. I really can't remember one thing about her, just that she lived down the hall and her name sounds sort of like mine, but spelled with an ugly y dangling off the end of it. There is really not one thing that I can think of to say about her.

Which Reminds Me

"With unbreakable faith in the path of progress it endeavors to follow, to follow..." (a line from the Salvadoran national anthem.)

Yes, I suppose that you could also translate "el camino" as the "way," although a bit of a stretch from the "path" or the "road."

Yes, all these poems sound so cool about having to make your own way through the sea because there is no way, only stars in the sea. But actually there is a way, although probably not the way that you wanted. It is a hard way, a way of pain and death, of suffering, of going against the mob. We are against the mafia. Jesus said: "Take up your cross and follow me." Jesus took the high road and he calls us to do the same. Although we may fall short at times, the least we can do is keep our records in better order than that. Yes, how true. And you call this progress? But I digress.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember hearing that Bonnie took the low road, thus we will never meet again. You will find a different piano teacher if you want to make some political points about that. I am not available.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember that someone was talking about an incident that occurred at the club. No, I wasn't there at the time and didn't see what happened. She was making some very elaborate extrapolations about that but it was not clear to me from what she was saying what actually happened. Some type of diving accident perhaps although it is not clear who was involved. Listen to her yap about that is giving me a big headache. I really don't have time for her crazy nonsense. I have other things on my mind, such as graduating from high school.

Which Reminds Me

Anyway, there is nothing of a personal nature that I would want to discuss with Lori Way, who married Al Moore as I recall. I don't want to be hearing about the "Way" or, for that matter, the "Moore," part of Lori. Enough said about that. I am never going to go there to San Jose to grovel and beg for nothing much. When will San Jose get a clue that everyone who matters has gone and moved away and left Northern California to the dogs? Sometimes San Jose is very slow to catch up with the rest of us.

Which Reminds Me

Shortly after the Soccer War, El Salvador, having declared itself the winner, staged a victory parade which, as it happened, was going along Roosevelt Street, which was just outside our back door. Did we walk a short block from our back door to watch the parade, you were asking? Well, yes, actually we did. We may even have a photo of that somewhere, soldiers riding on tanks brandishing machine guns. What were you expecting from some clueless American tourist? That we would just not notice what was going on around us?

Of course we know that Sharon probably has a completely different idea of the Soccer War, herself having lived in Honduras for many years as the child of missionaries to Honduras before she got married and became a missionary to El Salvador. After the war, El Salvador had to absorb many refugees who had been expelled from Honduras due to their being emigrants from El Salvador.

Personally, I don't see why I should be forced to take sides with either country in such a political matter. We are missionaries, not political emissaries. We are supposed to remain sort of neutral in these matters to some extent. And anyway, Honduras was never that special to me that I would bother to study that so deeply. Whatever the international courts decide, that is probably how things will be, and yet I do think that I heard Salvadorans asking for some relief from the severity of some more recent political repercussions, but I really don't know very much. I wasn't paying attention to that. I really can't speak to that issue.

Which Reminds Me

During the Soccer War we were listening to local radio broadcasts that were saying something about the wife of the President of Honduras leaving the country in an airplane with a suitcase containing that country's entire money supply. With our shortwave radio we also tuned in broadcasts from Honduras describing the wife of the president of El Salvador leaving on an airplane with a suitcase containing that country's entire money supply. To me the point of that was something about wartime propaganda and how both sides of the conflict are slinging things back and forth at each other in exaggerated hyperbole, but perhaps my cousin David, who was visiting us at the time from California, had other impressions of that. I really wouldn't know. We never discussed that with him in so many words and anyway it is too late now because he died almost 30 years ago. Someone was trying to make a point about the suitcase of money not being really so much crammed with currency bills as perhaps some codes of international significance. Yes, I suppose that also may be true.

Which Reminds Me

Oh, look, there is the eponymous Mr. Forward. What are you saying? To pay it Forward? Ummm.... And what about paying it Backward? Where is Mr. Backward when I need him? This whole scheme just doesn't work for me, obviously. Without a Mr. Backward or a Mr. Forward, that leaves me basically a Mental Ward.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember hearing about how Salvadorans are the 'guanacos,' possibly a reference to llama-type critters that live in the Southern Cone of South America, they kick and bite if you get too close to them, and Hondurans are the 'catrachos,' although the etymology of that term is somewhat of a mystery to me. I haven't really studied that very deeply. When you are hearing that at age 9 or 10 you just take that at face value because, yes, it probably is much more complicated than just a simple soccer game, but that was only one week of war, the Soccer War, that we lived through, sitting on the balcony in the evenings listening to the battery-powered shortwave radio reports because, anyway, there is nothing else to do. At 6 p.m. the electricity was turned off for the night so the city was very dark at night and martial law meant you had better not be thinking of going anywhere outside of your house.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember seeing Anita Stone at the club once or twice but we never talked. I don't know very much about her life so there is no reason for me to be going there.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely recollect that in the family's old photo collection there was a photograph of a Japanese girl who was my grandmother's friend. I seem to remember someone saying that they apparently met on a passenger ship while on voyaging from China to the U.S. Well, at least we know that my grandmother had lived in China, mostly Hong Kong, during her childhood, but of the Japanese girl nothing is known, just that maybe she lives up north somewhere, maybe Washington or Oregon. So, yes, my grandmother had her own interesting life but we don't need to be trying to reenact that. Times change. I need to have my own life.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember that I heard Cori saying some very mean and nasty things about Koreans because, I don't know, maybe she is Japanese. No, actually her parents were missionaries to Japan and they have adapted to Japanese culture. Which is weird because we missionary families are not supposed to be doing that. We are neither Japanese nor Korean so we are no supposed to be involving ourselves in that type of internal conflict that is of no concern to us. We are Americans who are supposed to represent a better way to them. That is not our mission to be collecting racial issues, as if we don't already have plenty of that sort of thing back home in the USA. And you thought there were no racial issues in other countries, only here? Ha ha ha!

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I suppose that if I wanted or needed someone to represent me, I could always hire a lawyer to say what I need them to say on my behalf. Of course, you are obviously not my lawyer and have not earned a red cent from me, that I should be acknowledging your offhand ramblings of no interest or benefit to me. But since there is no profit to be had, there would be no point in my hiring some lawyer to drain my bank account with endless legal and bank fees, all for nothing, all to no avail. As I see it, this is just a useless waste of time and energy.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I sort of see the Gonzo gang out there plotting and scheming. Not that it matters. Not that they will get much out of that but perhaps some cheap publicity stunts. Maybe someday the Denny's Duran's gang will wake up and find their butts have been deported home to Honduras but I don't really know if that would ever really happen. Coming from me that would be just an empty threat, a cheapskate threat from the white girl they have challenged themselves to destroy as the pinnacle of brown achievement, so that would only help their cause in the long run, and not really help mine. So this is all just an exercise in futility, all designed to waste my time on trivial pursuits while they get themselves in position to rob the chicken coop. I am just saying. And you do everything to help them do that, so I don't what you expect me to do about that.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I am sure that if there was something that I needed to know about oil and gas matters, my mother would explain that to me at the appropriate time. Thus, there is no reason why I should be called on to take on the gratuitous insults of some mentally retarded bimbo who claims to be a friend of or related to the little sister from hell, something which does nothing to commend you to me as anyone that I should be conversing with about that. If there is something to be known about U.S. policy on oil and gas reserves, I certainly don't need to be getting that from you. But these decisions perhaps do not belong to our generation because, anyway, we would have to kill you all in the first place and that would be just too messy for us to handle. I have no problem with the government or law enforcment doing something about that but, anyway, it is not my place to say.

Which Reminds Me

Our family spent one week in Colorado attending a music festival in Estes Park. That was while on our way driving cross-country heading toward Florida. Colorado has many mountain peaks but we never got anywhere near Pike's Peak, so I suppose that you could call our vacation a bust, except that such a designation would be entirely inappropriate in this context. There was no Colorado Gold Rush afoot. We had a very nice time anyway attending concerts along with our friends, the Stewart family, and also enjoyed our one and only time going through the Rockies. But we never lived there so I really don't know very much about Colorado. I remember walking through some tourist souvenir shops and that sort of thing, more places to spend money that I don't have.

Which Reminds Me

During high school I always studiously ignored those clueless F-bomb whiners Thomas and Raymond, so why would I want to help your worthless F-bomb Cori, not to mention Ann's various nameless F-bomb connections of whom nothing is known, just that they sensed to be out there somewhere making a mess of things. But I don't want to hear about it. I have said too much already.

Which Reminds Me

Why is this Win-Dee, a one-celled amoeba, allowed to rampage freely, a bull in a china shop? There are many other considerations that would just make your tiny little head much too crowded for comfort in light of your simple-minded ying-yang shematics, but I digress.

Which Reminds Me

One day in El Salvador, Ann Campbell wanted us to meet some friends of hers who were visiting from New York so we met at the McDonald's that was next to our house. It was a boy whose vocabulary was limited to mostly F-bombs so there was no conversation to be recalled. What was his name? Nothing comes to mind.