Bomb Threat... and forgotten memories.

"Your vehicle insurance has expired, and we have tried to contact you multiple times.  This will be our third and final call to allow you to take advantage of our special offer," the recorded voice on my phone said to me.

"If you wish to speak to a customer service representative, press 1."

"1."

I hate these calls, and there is no reason that I should be receiving it on my government issued phone.  So Friday morning, I pressed "1" and snarled into the phone.  "You have called the US Federal Government, and I want to know why you are calling this phone."

A deeply accented male voice responded with a similar snarl.  "Who the f** are you?  What is YOUR name?"

"This is James Lawton with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and you have NO reason to call a government phone."

"Are you familiar with 9-11?  Osama bin Laden was one of us.  And the World Trade Center?  We did that.  Osama is my brother, and we are all coming for you.

"Your US Army is filled with sleeper cells, and we are going to rise up against you."

After quite a bit of vivid description of how I had engaged in fellatio with a number of folk, some of whom are related to me, the guy suggested some improbable physical acts, and then he left me with a statement.  "Tomorrow, we will be bombing a Marine Corps base in New Jersey."

And he hung up.

During the call, I walked out of my office into the hall, where a co-worker shushed me - there were meetings taking place in rooms all up and down the corridor.  But when she heard the tenor of the conversation, her eyes grew wide.

By the time the caller hung up, I was shaking, I was so mad.

Yeah, the call was not coming from a 601 number.

I talked it over, first with a couple of co-workers, and then with the security guy (who had done the exact same thing I did, and had an identical conversation, right down to the fellatio suggestion). He said that there was nothing in the message that identified it as a credible threat.  There was nothing specific mentioned, nothing that indicated that I had been chosen to communicate a genuine threat.  No declaration against projects of the Corps, no locations that meant anything to me.

The caller was, he explained, a member of a group in the Middle East who call up cell phones with the intent to harass.

All the same, all day Saturday, I was watching for something to happen in New Jersey.  It was no consolation that Saturday's attack happened in Pittsburgh, or that it was a white guy that did it.  All the same, I breathed a little easier when the day passed without 'my' incident happening.

There was a crazy thing, though.  For years, my sister Caroline and I have had recurring conversations about neural pathways, about how you form new memories and learn new things.  And specifically, how you can use existing neural pathways to access memories.

While I was relating the story to a co-worker on Friday, suddenly the hairs on my neck stood up.  I was suddenly reliving a memory of a previous call, received years ago, also made to my government cell phone.  The phone call in New Orleans had been almost exactly the same as the one Friday, except it closed with a non-credible threat against my wife rather than an unspecified military base.

My wife.

Once I remembered the incident, I remembered other pieces.  A memory of absolutely losing my mind.  I have a fragment of a memory of me screaming incoherently into the phone - in my office - about the actions that I was going to take to track the man down, to dismember his body, and to stomp individual pieces of his body to pieces of meat, indistinguishable from the dust with which his blood was going to mingle.  Another scrap of memory of spittle flying from my mouth as I turned purple with absolute rage.  A memory of trying to track down the source of the call, with no success.  (Cloning and spoofing cell phones was a pretty novel concept at that point.)

Before I started describing Friday's call, I HAD NO RECOLLECTION OF THE EARLIER CALL. My brain had tucked that particular bit of information down a disused neural pathway, and did not let me have access.  I have never understood how people could sublimate traumatic experiences, and what their brains would do to hide the memory of emotional and physical pain.  But my brain had done exactly that.  Only by relating Friday's experience did I get a chance to re-experience the fury and fear associated with a threat on my wife.

The threat against Kathe was no more credible than the threat against the Marine Base in Jersey.  And I knew that.  But it played on the same fear - the fear of an attack on something I hold dear.

Nobody can threaten me with things that I don't care about.  Threaten me with extra taxes on balut?  That might affect me once, if that.  Threaten to destroy old copies of Ranger Rick?  Huh.  I'm a little nostalgic on that one, but OK. 

But threaten my family, and the game changes entirely.

I hate the fact that this happens.  I hate that I lost control.  And I have no idea what we - as good people - are supposed to do to address the problems that result in such hate.

I wold love to think that this call is the modern equivalent of "Is your refrigerator running?  Well, you'd better run and catch it."  or "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?  Well, you better let him out!"

But it is not.  It is much deeper than that.  It is the result of extreme tribalism - where we humans (all of us!) break people into 'us' and 'them'.  And that dichotomy makes me sad.

I suspect that love is the only answer - loving my enemies, blessing them that curse me, doing good to them that hate me, and praying for them which despitefully use me. For if I love them which love me, what is my reward?  Everybody does that.

But it is a dilemma.  I also feel protective of my tribe.  My people. And my mind works overtime when I feel y'all are in danger.

Go love some people, y'all.  

Child-like

"I mean this as a compliment - I have to preface my comment that way, because some people would not take it as such - but you are very child-like in your approach to some things."

My co-worker was worried that I would take offense.  She need not have been concerned.

The context: I had picked up a few agates from a parking lot on the way to work.  I geek out about these stones, and when I find a pretty one, I like to share.  So I showed it to her, and in some way, I wanted an ooh.  Or an ahh.   I am pretty accustomed to people not being impressed with the same things that I am, but it doesn't seem to ever translate into a loss of enthusiasm.

I guess most people learn to tamper their outward displays of enthusiasm, but that has always been hard for me.   I tend to interrupt adults when they are talking if I am excited, I stop while I am walking and marvel at the amazing bug, and I can't pass by a gravel driveway without looking for fossils.  And jaspers.  And agates.  And geodes.

And then, when I find one, I want to show it off.

When I was four, I found a penny in a parking lot, and never stopped looking for more.  And by that, I mean I could not pass by the SAME parking lot, without looking for more.  I used to find bbs in the street (yes, bbs from a bb-gun; I collected them religiously).  I loved finding rare shells on the beach.  I found a stone in Belem (where rocks are not present) that was later identified by a geologist as obsidian (I am pretty sure it was not).  All my life I have been fascinated by what I find - what treasures appear at my feet.

The incident with me showing off the agate made my coworker stop for a moment when her four-year-old wanted to show her his newly-established prowess with tying his shoes.  Mama, WATCH. It slowed her down to appreciate the beauty in the items without number that she is handed every day - Mama, LOOK.

The past few weeks have been difficult in a lot of ways, and it is easy to get caught up in the importance of doing something.  Pushing, arguing, trying, making changes, getting things done.  And there is a time for spending all of your time and effort working your butt off for those things.

But there is also importance in being generous with your time.  Sometimes, that generosity takes the form of sitting with a new friend on his porch, drinking his coffee and eating a muffin, while talking about how times are different.  Sometimes, it looks much more like the silliness of a middle-aged man joining in with girls as they are doing double-dutch jump rope.   Other times, it is sitting quietly with a friend who needs someone to sit quietly with them.  And sometimes, it means putting the whole morning's schedule on hold while the four-year-old ties his shoes.

And every once in a while, generosity of spirit shows itself in the form of a co-worker who is willing to marvel at yet another rock.