Which Reminds Me

Yes, I do not remember myself singing any petition or voting as the board of trustees, nor can I say whether I forgot something, so obviously I cannot speak for other people's unspeakable devices, needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I suppose that I should have done more, but on the other hand, how does one go about firing one's overprotective parents while at the same time honoring them as I should, and they do like to be in control of everything.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, oh, is that the vapid clueless Reeces I hear yapping in the background? There actually are no brains in Georgia's empty head. You are nothing to me, a nuisance. But now that we are back in the U.S. we can drop you idiotic peanut butter cups off in Atlanta and get on with our normal lives. How can you not know that the Mississippi bubble is gone to Boston? Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, now I sort of get that, uh, maybe.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I have read so many books about how I should have more self-esteem and more self-confidence, not to be so down on myself, and to think about how God loves me and have a positive view of what God has done for me,and all of these books are written by the experts of religious spirituality or psychology, all of whom are assumed to be telling me the truth about how I should think of myself. In views of that point, why this constant booing and jeering sound from the swaggering bullies department? I am told by the Bible that I should not listen to your negative whining, I should be thinking about God's promises of blessing and block your idiotic rantings out of my mind because, anyway, you are the devil, obviously. Why else would you try to curse me that way? These points do not come out so easily as you seem to stupidly imagine.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, you were saying something about the Canadians. The truth was that when Lois Stewart was still alive and living near us here in Florida, she would be corresponding with some of the Canadians and sometimes we would here some tidbits about them from herself or Susie. Susie once visited them in Washington state and told us about Dawn's disease which makes raising a pack of children difficult one would assume. It was really the Stewarts who were the contact persons for connecting all of these people to the Canadians. But now that the Stewarts are departed from us I really have no way to know what is happening with them. You could always call Susie, she was always full of information about persons only some of whom I can remember maybe a name and not much else, especially after so many years.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I don't like how that sounds, that part about myself being considered guilty until I can figure out how to prove myself innocent. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? That makes you sound like a prosecutor, and myself not being that guilty, hopefully you will retire soon or be fired first before anything worse could happen to me. Or else I could die first and then it wouldn't matter. Either way.

What was that you said about the innocence of Joan of Ark burning at the stake? I don't understand. I can't possibly be that omniscient. Surely there must be someone behind the scenes tricking me and stabbing me in the back, and I never was a huge fan of the Trixie Belden books. So actually none of this mess really impresses me very much, although scary clever it is, yes.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I almost cannot even recognize you today with all of that plastic surgery, and yet they you go prattling and carrying on as if we were ever acquainted. A puzzling mish-mash to be sure.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, if only I had some unique angle to sell and cash in on this point, wouldn't that make my life so much easier, especially my finances. Mr. Borges, who wrote the book on the Azores Island connection, later committed suicide (in 1873) by shooting himself with a pistol due to his financial difficulties. And you were asking why have I not followed Borges' example and done the same to myself? You were insisting that I should do suicide. And yet something might have been lost to humanity if I had passed earlier than now, so I am content to still be here on the planet breathing and toiling through this vale of woe, this valley of the shadow of death, while waiting for my turn to go. And your point was? Everything that I need to know about that is publicly available in the public dictionary for all to see. Shoot yourself, Bueno brats. So you see, it is not for monetary gain that I have hung on this long, given the tax and spending that it requires.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember that I heard someone protesting that Kathy's ex-boyfriend had dumped Italian Kathy and ran off with a Guatemalan, who would be Linda Seese. It would be difficult for me to say that because I had not known that about Linda. Why should I care about whether he ran off with an Italian or a Guatemalan? They all seem sort of the same to me, more or less. I cannot differentiate them very much, and why would I want to be bothered with more about that?

Which Reminds Me

Yes, that was nice of Linda Seese to say hello to me in the hallway at high school, and she also complimented my new blouse. That was nice. And that is almost the only thing I can remember about her, other than it might have been her who was seen at the fair accompanied by Kathy's ex-boyfriend, although I am really not sure what I heard. Don't ask me. Ask Kathy who was overheard grumbling about that in the girls' bathroom. It was unfortunate that I happened to be in the bathroom at the time, and walking past them and out of the bathroom, there was Kathy's ex-boyfriends standing there possibly eavesdropping on that. And he glared at me weirdly and I walked away silently without saying anything to anybody about that, but as I never hear the end of that, once again I find myself compelled to repeat the same story about event that are not clear to me, and, anyway, none of my business. I never had any boyfriend in high school so why am I still hearing this same things swirling around and around.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember that way back in the beginning David had concocted a "Great Expectations" schematic in which I was to perform the role of crazy jilted Miss Havisham, who sits there in her crumbling mansion contemplating the rats feasting upon her moldering wedding cake. Well, that is one way of looking at it, and another reason to avoid David always, because I have enough problems already without his nonsense.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember that you loaded me down with bags of gifts and sent me away in the style of Keturah, in a manner of speaking. I have mixed feelings about that. Better than starving in the wilderness, but also that means you cannot actually come back later pretending to be my friend when obviously all the time you just wanted me to disappear and go away. There was nothing else to say about that. I get it.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I think that it is quite strange that someone should be accusing us of denying the existence of Israel, when we are such wholehearted supporters of the Holy Land and its role in the return of the Jews to their promised homeland at the end of times, as prophesied in the Holy Scriptures.

That said, while doing our genealogical research, we were surprised to learn of the existence of Mr. Israel who married one of the Baca daughters. It is true that we had not been aware of his existence, given our complete detachment from and lack of connection to Uncle Sam. I did not even know that my Dad had an Uncle Sam, so how would I know about the existence of Israel. Only after doing all this furthter research do I learn some irrelevant and unimportant points about Uncle Sam. So?

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I thought I hard some chatter about Nazis, but how many times do I have to explain the same thing about how that is not me and I do not know anything about that. I would refer all questions about Nazis to the Italian CIA agent family, but you should already know to ask them as they own all information about everything anyway and I am not allowed to ask questions about such things.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I do remember that all of that happened when I was 10 or 11 years old, and then later, after our furlough in the United States, we had returned for the second term and one Saturday we were visited by the girls who had lived across the street from us during the previous term, who had come to see us at our current house in another part of town, and among other things, they were telling us some lousy missionary jokes, that are somewhat circulating down there among the lower classes, and which are generally to be considered as a sign of incipient attitude problem, which generally does not improve over time and may become aggravated by repetition. That was the last time that I actually saw them. I think that my sister once visited them years later and she probably remembers much more than I do about them. I tend to forget about these things because I prefer to remember other things of more interest to me.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, perhaps we did contribute some of our toys for the lottery prize, I really do not remember anything about that now. They were a nice family who liv4ed across the street from us, in an old style type of house of which the gate would be closed at night, and inside they live sort of halfway outside, the father having his barbershop chair sitting right over there and the mother a small store and also a "comal" or grinding stone where they would grind the corn into the masa for tortillas, and people would come and buy masa for their tortillas. And when they invited us to have breakfast there, they would serve it with beans and rice same as every other meal, and one day when we were playing over there, they were talking about the upcoming election, and when I asked who they would be voting for, they refused to say, because, as they said, in that country the "voto secreto" is very important. That was a secret. But their political slogan said something about "a cada cual su tortilla y su comal," i.e. to each his tortilla and his comal stone for grinding the corn into tortilla dough.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, so funny, what were we thinking, at 10 years old playing with the little girls who lived across the street from where we lived, and they would sell tickets to their friends and people down the street to come and see the little white girls put on a show. Ha ha ha! And we would get a big sheet of paper on which to draw the scenery for the show with crayons, and that was our backdrop, and I do not remember what we did for scripts. I completely forget what we did for a show. And then they would have a lottery and someone would take home a prize, although not us. We were the entertainment. But it did not matter too much what we did there, just being white was shocking enough to have people stopping and staring at us everywhere we went.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, it is true that, white as my skin may be, even so, I cannot speak a lick of Gaelic. I do not remember where I heard it said that there may be some interesting points in Gaelic, but that is useless to me without having actually studied the language and made the effort to decipher the clues in that regard. And perhaps I will not live long enough to get to that point. And life is short and then you die, and there are only so many languages that a person can absorb, not being an expert in the field of linguistics. I don't know how they manage so many languages and I did not start early enough to get very far with that point. Obviously. Needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, interesting how politically our nation is said to be the enemy of Russia, and yet our church denomination has had missionaries ministering there in Russia and ministering to Russian people, and I think that is good. I do not understand quite how they manage to do that with all of the political turmoil in the atmosphere, not to mention the language barrier, but for those who can do that, I say that's great. We ought to be showing them how to do that if we can help in any way, given our great success already in this arena, but then again we also need to make sure we are taking care of our own people here and not losing them to the Katie scam.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, speaking of geological faults, I do feel bad about the traffic accident, but, anyway, my insurance company did kindly pay the bills so that was nice of them, given that I had paid my dues in that regards.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember that Grandpa Calkins was a lifelong subscriber to Sunset Magazine. So who knows, maybe that was the deal. We buy your product, we pay our dues, we ask no questions, and you do not bother us with your junk. But evil magazine witch sits there in her filthy decrepit palazzo, her head swollen to the size of a watermelon, imagining so many things that never happened. I dream about things also, but what need is there of any proof when you are the almighty Star Chamber? With your high authority, you may categorically slam one people or another and there is nothing to say or ask in regards to that. We

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember that I was recruited to make a point about what are we going to do when there are no jobs available because all the young people are doing the work now and the technology has advanced so far that many jobs are eliminated and no longer exist, and the flood of immigrants have consumed all of the lower level jobs. So where are we going to work when there are no jobs? There was supposed to be a lesson about what to do with our abundance of leisure time now that our services are no longer wanted or needed at the office, but some pieces of the puzzle are not fitting together at all well. I really do not mind working to improve my use of leisure time. However, this creations a new problem of trying to live without a paycheck. 

Which Reminds Me

Yes, you people certainly are thick as Karo syrup. I actually don't recommend chugalugging that straight from the bottle, but why bother wasting my energies trying to dissuade you from your silliness? No, that would be useless. And if you have to choke on your own nonsense before your learn your lessons, how is that my problem?

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember mentioning that during grade school or junior high at the little school, I did read the Pollyanna novels that were there in the library, and I did like them actually, there are some good points made in the Pollyanna books, although one should not expect to stretch the point of positivity too far, so as to make a law of it, because there are times when one has to point out the negative side of things, one has to say no to various temptations and so forth. And in regards to Pollyanna, having read the books, I know that Pollyanna's husband was named James, and I liked the sound of that name, and if I would have had some children of my own at some future time, the name of James might have been on the list of name possibilities, but of course that never happened. Which brings up the question of why you are so obsessed with the fictional character of James. We cannot have the fictional character of James, so out of touch with reality, dictating to us a pack of nonsense. It was only a Pollyanna book. Obviously. Needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, that must have been awkward for you, always having to pretend that you are Dutch, when actually Dutch means nothing, only a big fat zero for anyone refusing to emigrate to Never-Never Land. So either way, there is no win available in this picture, so I do not understand why all this ruckus about nothing much.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I do seem to remember the Pushme-Pullyu toy that was sitting on my shelf was among the various things that disappeared from our house during the time that Antonia was our maid while we were living in El Salvador. My mother fired her, although not specifically for that item. My mother caught her leaving with a suitcase packed full of our stuff. Not that I am asking for my toy back, but it was not her place to decide what we should do with our stuff.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember the time in Central Florida when I was interviewing that German exchange student and the woman who was her host while studying here. The host woman mentioned that she has gotten sand in her shoes, an expression meaning that she has gotten used to Florida and will not be leaving. which expression I had not previously heard but since then I have heard that said multiple times, and that is almost the only thing that I can remember about that event. So anyway,  I wrote the complimentary article that was required for my work about the exchange student soon to be returning to Germany to resume her studies enrolled in some program for extremely bright persons. Ok, so that's nice. She has a German accent but while in America working to improve her English skills. And as for me, I did my job, and nothing more is required of me in regards to the German exchange student and I do not wish to continue this conversation. Nothing more is required of me in regards to that.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I cannot believe everything that I hear online, and yet I did think that I heard that Ben was making comparisons of the church in Latin America to the Jewish community, which they also have one of those there, as also they have an Arab sector, making various points that sort of skews the picture of what that meant, but anyway, we are letting them run their own show now, so we do not want to burden those poor people with some political things that they are not in a position to handle in that slapdash method that Ben was using.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, it would seem useless to ponder the useless point of how my life might have been were it not for a fluke of blood chemistry. Better to bow out gracefully than to live in bitter enmity with God and man. Perhaps when the negatives are the majority and the positives are all gone, then it will be interesting to see how that works.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, it is hard for me to understand why I should care about Kathy Murray from college, she had nothing, only some little piece of Puerto Rico, which is an incredibly boring thing to bother with. That's nothing. She probably could not understand much of Spanish language. So what if our high school classmate Libby is also married to Puerto Rico? Why should I care about that? I never knew of any Puerto Ricans when I was in high school.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, someone was talking about the dancers doing the Tirol even while surrounded by mountain peaks, a la Custer's last stand, but of course that was the Saint Louis Exposition. But we don't quite recognize the Tirol dancers of Salt Lake City, so if there was an analogy there, I am not sure how that would work.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, the Coles should not be taking it so personally that I decided not to work for them, because I had a different job offer at nearly the same time and decided to go that route instead, for whatever reasons I had at the time, whether that was a good idea looking back matters not, given that a road taken automatically eliminates the Coles from future involvement in my personal life, obviously. But the Puerto Rico thing was only one year and then I was gone to yet another job, where there was some Cuba, and after a couple of years I was gone on to something else, so looking back I don't see where Puerto Rico has anything to say to me this much later. But if there were another job offer, I might consider its benefits and decide one way or another. I should be working, probably, but then again I often think that I can do better than that, even if the opportunities are not available at the moment.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, it could perhaps be considered a nice thing that during high school, the Persian and the Jewish students were very good friends, and one saw them playing chess together and chatting in the library and perhaps other things. I don't know what happened to alienate them from each other, their friendship seemingly severed or damaged for whatever reason, if that is even true or not, there being so much noise online. I did not know either one of them so well that I would be able to comment on this point. It would seem incredibly impertinent for me to comment on this points, myself being merely a Christian of no special significance to either one of them.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, how many times do I have to explain the same thing about not accepting the job offered to me by the Cole family and that was the end of that story. I am not particularly interested in hearing more from those control freaks. I already told you no, I am not accepting the job. You already have your Nancy on staff, what more could you want from me? Have I not heard the story about the pranks your father pulled on my father, although that was before Grandpa Calkins led him to salvation. About how your father poured cement in my father's work shoes, among other things? We had forgotten about that, but if you have not yet repented of your evil and wicked deeds, perhaps we can bring be reminded of that.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember that Lynda has new friends now, she prefers to hang with those who pray for her when she needs some spiritual support. She said that I never prayed for her that way, and it could be true. I wasn't the type who goes around praying for everyone, although it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to do that. But then again, I have to consider that my words might end up circulating somewhere in the ozone layer and boomeranging all over the place. Who would I be praying for anyway? Who would I really be talking to? It wouldn't be clear to me whether I was talking to a friend or an enemy.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, one cannot help but wonder whether that is Joann Coale I hear yapping in the background. How could you be so notoriously famous for writing a book about step-parenting if you had not stolen someone else's husband? Although one cannot believe everything that one hears online. But I digress. Anyway, if you were expecting to collect on some mindless loyalty from us, you may be disappointed. Did you imagine that we had learned nothing from the Webbering example? No, it does not pay to care so much about these so-called leaders with feet of clay, here one day and gone tomorrow. Needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, during college, my friend was doing a teacher job at a school nearby, and invited me to go along with her to see what that was like, so I did go along one day, and it was weird because one of the students asked me if I was a new student. Ok, so I look young, but not really that young. I don't know why I don't remember anything else about that.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, maybe you could explain why this nasty Italian broomstick imagines that I have no standards? This is not a conversation that I remember having with you.

Which Reminds Me

 Yes, perhaps some persons in the room deserved to be blacklisted, I really wouldn't know. We were all packed into a room and shown a movie, and there was some racy things in that movie that I had not noticed  or remembered noticing the previous time that I had seen that movie, which was 2-3 years earlier in the lobby of the college dorm, when it was shown to a large crowd of people there. Yes, as I was saying to someone, perhaps I did blink because I had not remembered that part of it. Apparently they were castigating the person who had originally chosen the movie and foisted it upon us, who knows what they did  to him, and perhaps we were the clueless non-leadership who had not made a stink about it, unlike the leadership who had. Of course. Apparently one has to make a stink about every thing that comes along to be considered for leadership, and not to be mistaken for the mindless cattle as pictured.

This definition of leadership creates a hurdle difficult to attain. If I were to make a stink about every thing that comes along, I would never hear the end of it. And If I do not make a stink about every thing that comes along, I would never hear the end of it. Thus, either way, just making a stink about every little thing that comes along would not achieve much. The better solution would be not to accept any of these spurious invitations, but which ones? How would I know what they were plotting? They never tell me anything.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, someone was saying something about Rusty's birthday party. Many people were invited, we walked over there across the street and our face was recorded in a photograph. Later, someone was saying that the photo was placed on some sort of blacklist of persons who are not welcome or permitted in future to socialize with Sharon Baldwin. We were all framed. Ok, fine, whatever. 

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I was also hearing a surprisingly large amount of noise from Baca, a person who did not get any great prize from marriage to whoever that was, I could not understand who that was. There is way too much loud noise from North California, given that so distantly are we related to them it is almost not worth mentioning their existence, and might even be beneficial for them to be forgotten by us, given that no one remembered to mention their existence until much too late for us to do anything about that anyway. If they are not going to confess what they really did, how can we "help" them with that?

Which Reminds Me

 Yes, I always thought Miss Marken was a good teacher of English as far as that goes and I also took her psychology class. However, she might have had some other activities behind the scenes on which I have no comment, not having been aware of that other stuff.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, who can forget the Iran hostage crisis that was raging during the final year of President Carter's term in office? Then interestingly the hostages were released almost simultaneous to President Reagan taking office. Amazing, how did President Reagan arrange all of that when he had not yet taken office? We never hear much about what really happened. 

However, coincidentally, it was perhaps only mere coincidence that apparently there were some students in our high school who were exiled Persians or Iranians or something of that naturel, not that I would know anything about that. I wasn't paying that much attention to such matters. The student body was very diverse, actually. 

Later all these strange widgets began appearing, in which our high school classmate James is prominently featured, even though in high school we were not really so well acquainted that I would be able to think of something to say about him. Only after high school do we look in the senior yearbook and notice the name of "Wilson" attached to his name, which probably means that his mother was a Wilson, Wilson being a very common name. But interestingly I do remember the Dr. Everett Wilson family from Santa Cruz living in El Salvador years earlier, while he was writing his treatise on the history of El Salvador, when I was in maybe fifth grade, they had two daughters, but I do not remember them ever mentioning to us their having another relative of also living there at the time. Also there were some Wilsons at our college who are known to be all related to each other and to the Everett Wilson family. But what would I know about that? Nothing actually. I see no need of these artificial widgets devised by the Wilsons as a distraction to shift the focus off of themselves and how they relate to their cousin from Persia.. In fact, come to think of it, I have not much connection at all to the Wilsons. The more time goes by, the less I can emember about the Wilsons.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember becoming acquainted with Joann Cole, only once, during college, and there was nothing particularly interesting about that. There was no reason to imagine that Joann would be a friend of mine in the future, given that the Cole family are sort of not very interesting domineering people who we we would be better off getting rid because there is nothing very interesting to be expected from their manipulations and control freak behavior that we later heard about online.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, one often wonders how many times I have to remind those Midwestern cooks that no, my name is NOT Helen, and no, I am not going to fit into your imaginary Methodist schematics in which I am cast as the imaginary rich girl enjoying all of these imaginary privileges in a world that I had never heard of. Oh, but we cannot be expecting too much thoughtfulness from the poster child of Maximized Stupidity. Needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember seeing that "Book of Virtues" on a shelf, and it looks very pretty on a shelf, but I cannot say that I have read much of it, although I did notice that some of its contents are things that I have already read other places, such as Aesop's Fables and various other things, but I suppose it is not a bad idea to compile that in a huge volume, so that we can just say "Read the Book," to be read when the mood for feeling virtuous should strike, which in your case problem perhaps does not happen very often. But anyway what does that have to do with the fact of Candice Bennett who lived on our dorm floor one year? I really don't see the connection and would be afraid to ask what that has to do with the price of tea in China.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember as from a distance, in a fog, my feelings of adolescent angst about not having any friends, and feeling that nobody likes me, which I wrote about in my diary or journal of the time. But how would you know about that unless you were amongst the spies who unloaded all of my high school paperwork while I was gone to school? I see that I am looking at your putrid frozen carcass in the rearview mirror and hoping to put some pedal to the metal the better to be rid of your pestiferous nonsense.

Which Reminds Me

 Yes, that was strange when, upon returning to Florida, Linda Crawley volunteers to me the information that she knows about Lori and that and that Lori being, how did she say it, complicated?, that Linda cannot do anything to help me now, I am just on my own and my life is now officially ruined, even though I do not remember myself mentioning this Lori story to Linda, that Linda should have any awareness of the existence of Lori. Interesting. Well, thanks Linda, for what? You Michigan pests are all fired from "helping" me, in case you had not figured this out yet.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I see on Facebook that Lori is now married to Jim, not Tom. Then whatever happened to Tom? And why is Tom's ex-wife Cindy accusing me of something? I don't even know how those people are. I only heard their names from Lori, who lived in the same apartment complex as myself, across the way over there. And who knows whether anything that Lori told me was true or not? I have no idea. I have nothing to add to whatever Lori said about them. For all I know, his name was really Jim, and you could not prove that by me. How would I know? Come to think of it, I do not know one thing about those people.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I remember answering my telephone and hearing a sales pitch from some type of salesman and/or loan shark, scammer or scam artist, who offers to help me get access to "other people's money"and then I say no or better yet hang up immediately without saying anything thus to avoid giving them any opportunity for further comment on these irrelevant points because obviously I will not want to pay their high interest rates and other unforeseen costs they forgot to mention.