2003-04-22 - 10:39 p.m.
It seems that there is a woman with a name very similar to mine, who also works in the multi-campus university system. Her name appears right before mine in the internal e-mail list, and apparently many of her colleagues cannot handle a (computer) mouse well enough to click on the appropriate name because I am constantly getting her e-mail. I've tried sending responses to let them know, but they always seem irritated, as though I have somehow violated their privacy, sort of like the people who get mad at you for returning a wallet you found because they think you stole it. (That has happened to me too.) So finally I just gave up and let them bear the consequences of their sloppiness.
I think this other person is a professor in the sciences or a laboratory instructor who supervises students. Most of the messages come from students making excuses for why they are not coming to work. There was one very clandestine message about contacting someone in Russia. But yesterday I got the best one of all: a complete set of detailed instructions for removing and processing mouse tails for some kind of an experiment. When I saw Mouse Tails in the subject line, I thought it was some kind of joke, but no, apparently this is something that is actually being done. There were different procedures for dealing with fresh as opposed to dried mouse tails. I keep imagining all those scientists, whacking off the tails of their little white lab mice. What if that was your job....
I like it when a little thread of bizarreness runs through the day.
(It also had me thinking about my almost non-existent education in science. I went to a crummy high school and the requirement for one science class was satisfied with a ninth grade class in physical science. The teacher quit suddenly and he was replaced with an elderly woman named Mrs. Bar-T who was not equipped even to keep order, much less teach anything. I learned only one thing all year which was that the lanolin in hand lotion came from sheep's wool. I went to college during the "relevant" seventies when liberal arts majors were allowed to take "issues" classes in the sciences. In "Issues in Biology" we talked about toxic waste, acid rain and endangered species. The "Issues in Physical Science" professor was a retired research oceanographer who kept the class entertained with his library of hilarious home movies from the Fiji Islands. They all kind of started with the professor and the native men sitting around drinking fermented coconut juice, and then going out in canoes... So I have never disected anything or even experimented on anything, even though I thought sure I was going to be the next Marie Curie when I was a kid.)
The second thread of bizarreness: I found out that my x-husband got married again. That bit of news made me feel odd for a day or so.... although I am actually glad for him, even relieved a little maybe, because my life got happier after I left him and his was very unhappy for a long time. Now I don't have to harbour that little knot of guilt that I ruined his life.... and maybe I won't have to fix his hems and zippers and punch holes in his belts and frame his pictures and draw plans for his projects any more. He never quite got over his dependence on my handiness, and I always figured it was easier to just keep helping him out and maintain a cordial relationship than to refuse.
But what seems strange to me is that he took her to the same exact place that we went on our honeymoon. Not...in other words....one iota of sentimentality. It is actually consistent with his personality: he likes to do the same things over and over. He likes to go to the same restaurant, and sit in the same place and have the waitress call him by name. He always wanted to go to the same camp ground every year, and stop at the same places on the road. A total creature of habit. And he had another strange quirk: he denied the past. Even though we had both been married before, he would never allow me to mention any past relationship and he never made any reference whatsoever to his. He never wanted to know anything about my life before he met me; it was as though he considered me born the day we met. A relationship like that doesn't go very deep. Soon you realize that you can only talk about the present: Pass the salt. Did you take the garbage out? Where is the checkbook? I was married to this man for seven years and barely knew anything about him.
So I imagine his new wife only knows the accidental fact about me, if she knows about me at all. I'll bet she doesn't know that she is not the first one to honeymoon with him in this particular place. He has created a completely new present reality, yet one that has some familiarity to it. And yes, I guess I hope for his sake that nobody says "Nice to see you back..."
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