During the Punic Wars, my high school girlfriend and I went steady by telephone. A house full of teenagers placed demands on our phone, so my slot had to be early in the evening, lest I interfere with my three sisters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 more important calls.<\/p>\n
One time, after having been on the line for an ungodly amount of time \u00e2\u20ac\u201d six minutes \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I mentioned something in Mad Magazine.<\/p>\n
The word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d triggered something in Evelyn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind, prompting her to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That reminds me: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m mad at you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sure enough, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had a silly quarrel the night before, and though the next night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversation started smoothly, my using the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153m-word\u00e2\u20ac\u009d triggered memories of many a quaint and curious series of long-forgotten chats and spats.<\/p>\n
So why had she been friendly \u00e2\u20ac\u201deven oblivious \u00e2\u20ac\u201d until I reminded her of something? And soon, without there being a cause, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d remind me and herself that she was mad.<\/p>\n
People do that a lot. Something triggers a recollection, and that becomes paramount. In addition, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll spend the day nursing a feeling of unease but can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t identify the source. Often something bugs me, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figure out what. When I solve it, I wonder why something that trivial had upset me.<\/p>\n
I got a taste of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that reminds me\u00e2\u20ac\u009d syndrome recently when I renewed acquaintance with a woman who shares my love for animals. A few years back she said my column about how my whippet had been mauled by a neighbor dog had moved her.<\/p>\n
So unrepentant was the bigger dog that after he broke Moosa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back, he dragged him into his yard for further modifications. Of course, the dog\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s owner used the standard cop-out: my dog somehow just got loose. Not my fault.<\/p>\n
But I digress. I can explain everything.<\/p>\n
Over e-mails of commiseration, Rita and I discussed our love for animals. Meanwhile, my son Stan, living in Denmark, wrote a piece on an interesting couple he and I had met in Las Vegas. Because we believe that couple to be eccentric, my son correctly identified me as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153collector of strange personalities.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I am.<\/p>\n
Because I liked and could readily identify with the subject matter my son wrote about, I used his composition as a guest column that week. Rita, my e-mail friend, surmised that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153strange personalities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d allusion was about her, among others. It may have been, but that thought never occurred to Stan or me. Rita cited examples of her own supposed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153strangeness,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all a matter of perception. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think Rita is strange.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You could have censored your son; you could have taken out the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstrange personalities\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 part,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rita said. Well, I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, and wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have anyway, I told her. She said she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d cancelled her subscription upon reading my son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s column and explained, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That reminds me, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m mad at you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That makes me wonder whether some folks feed these festering feelings, or at least file them in the freezer for the future. You see, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been having a civil e-mail conversation, and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten the reasons for being angry. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153strange personalities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d remark occurred years before, so Rita must have held the anger in abeyance for a long time.<\/p>\n
Well, Rita won that round. She wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be derailed. The reminder was stronger than the fact that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten the original cause for her discomfiture. And if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever reminded again of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153strange personalities,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will the anger return?<\/p>\n
Another such case happened once at Highlands after I had borrowed a three-hole puncher from a colleague. She wanted it back the next day, and I promised I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d return it then. Well, I forgot but again promised, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tomorrow for sure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
She was so certain I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forget the object a second time that she must have prepared precise, scolding words with which to flay me. On seeing me the next morning, she began a diatribe that enumerated all my shortcomings.<\/p>\n
I obviated the need for her to say any more by inserting, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on your desk; you were out of the office when I returned it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Once she saw the hole-puncher, what else was there to say? What was she going to do with the rehearsed invective? She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let it go to waste. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d bottled up a lot of anger, and it had to go somewhere. So she did the expected: She transferred the Trujillo-as-slob saga to somebody else.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The real reason I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m mad,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is because of some other guy who never returned things,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and here she made up an implausible scenario to explain why she chided me and why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153other people who are the problem.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
We do this in everyday life. We brace ourselves for a confrontation with the person who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crowding us in line, only to discover he or she is trying to return the wallet we left on a shelf. Or you refine a special gesture for the person in traffic who appears to be tailgating, when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to signal that you left your coffee mug on the roof of your car.<\/p>\n
If Evelyn even remembers that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that reminds me\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ritual, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably enjoy a good laugh. But as for Rita, I believe she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to hang on to the anger a bit longer, maybe a lot longer.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try not to write anything that reminds her she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mad at me.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Alliteration: The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.<\/p>\n
I tried being alliterative in my recent \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Miller Time\u00e2\u20ac\u009d column, with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pounds of the pesky polillas (moths) pounded into the recesses of the vacuum bag.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Reader John Shuster of Las Vegas did even better, with his share of e-mailed alliterative flair: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pounds of pesky polillas pounded past in vast proportion into the vacuum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pulmonary \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpretainer.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the Punic Wars, my high school girlfriend and I went steady by telephone. A house full of teenagers placed demands on our phone, so my slot had to be early in the evening, lest I interfere with my three sisters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 more important calls. One time, after having been on the line for an ungodly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}