Around the same time, I was at a bar in downtown Augusta. A young woman came to speak with me. She said: You look sad, can I tell you a joke? OK, said I. So she said: what's the difference between jelly and jam? I said I didn't know. She said: you can't jelly a dick in someone's ass. I didn't laugh but at least it was a joke I hadn't heard before.
I decided to cut to the chase by asking her if she worked for the government. She said: Ooh, are you paranoid? Do you think the government is spying on you? She then claimed to work for an ad agency, which was amusing as I suspected someone at NSA had been manipulating my internet ads.
Then she said: I bet I can guess your 1st name. And she "did", and I put that in quotes because it was obvious by now even though I had never met her before, she knew by name, what I looked like, and when and where to find me. Then she said: I bet I can guess your middle initial. Give me a hint. So I said: it's a letter between A and Z. She then correctly "guessed" my middle initial.
After that, she talked to me about a diamond tattoo on the right side of her left index finger. She said it had been a crown, but she got it changed later because she didn't like the way it looked. I asked about the man she came with. She claimed he was her date, yet he did not mind at all that she was paying so much attention to me and ignoring him.
She offered as well to buy me a drink, but as I was on #4 at the time, I said no thanks. Hard as it might be to believe, in the hours leading up to that encounter, I spent several hours responding to YouTube clips in a conversation that resembled a game of charades. My cue to leave after telling them where and when I would be was a clip titled "Shut Up, Meg". And when I say "telling", I mean I wrote on Notepad with my laptop with the expectation that they could see it as they were spying on me.
A few days after I started working in the golf cart factory, Russia invaded Ukraine, and I got a surprise text from my sister wherein she asked me if I was going off to fight. At the time, I expected Russia to conquer Ukraine in 3 months, so I told her no, because I saw no interest in fighting for a lost cause. When I asked her why I should go if the Army is too chicken to fight Russia, she said because I have combat training, foreign language skills, and that my presence would not signal the beginning of World War 3. She also mentioned completing the hero's journey, which I found odd, as I have never used that phrase with her. It seemed clear that someone had coached her to say that and asked her to contact me. My sister has never contacted me out of the blue like that.
In early January, I met a woman through online dating and began a romantic relationship with her. I had to pause that for a few months when I found out she was still legally married though estranged. She was struggling with past trauma and addiction, so we seemed like a natural pair. We comforted each other.
Also in January I visited a therapist on advice from a close friend. I shared my suspicions using visual aids from my laptop, but the therapist was more concerned with my alcohol abuse. I felt a little better after the session, but it was not worth $90 to me. Fortunately, I never got a bill for it. I guess the VA paid.
My nights in the golf cart factory were mostly uneventful except for an engineer who insisted on provoking me. It didn't stop until I jabbed a blunt object in his face and told him not to touch me again. That was 6 months or so after his initial assault, whereby he came up behind me, grabbed my arm, and yelled in my ear. Months later, he came up behind me, nut to butt, and said we were going to fight, and I was going to prison, etc. That is when I had to brandish a blunt object at him.
He was very proud of a kanji tattoo that he said meant "warrior spirit" but when I looked it up on my own, it simply means "fighting" and in Japanese is pronounced bu. Bushi means warrior; bushido means way of the warrior. The Japanese phrase for warrior spirit is yamato damashii and contains 3 kanji. It's a bad idea to get a tattoo in a language you can't read, because it's probably not going to say what you think it says. Tattoo artists don't double check these things. Also, the only people in Japan who have tattoos are criminals called yakuza. I doubt the people who get kanji tattoos know any of these things. By a strange coincidence, he disappeared from the factory not long after I remarked on this to my gal pal.
I had an interesting encounter with him on the evening of Veterans Day. There was an assembly on the factory floor with about 100 people present and the speaker asked any veterans to step forward. When none did after a pause, I did. I found that odd as I knew that in a crowd that size, I could not be the only veteran. When I entered the cafeteria, the only other person eating was the obnoxious engineer. I suppose it was some kind of subtle peace offering. I said nothing to him and ate another table.
The Saturday prior to Veterans Day in 2022, I marched in a Veterans Day parade while on a visit to my parents in Tennessee. When I returned, I bought some beer despite several glitches with the scanner and card reader. When I tried to watch YouTube videos, my headphones blasted static. That continued for 5 days until I left open a picture on my desktop of me holding a machine gun along with a video of a rattlesnake preparing to strike. I suspect this is what got me the special treatment for the Veterans Day meal. My headphones worked normally after Veterans Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment