One Tuesday in August
I chanced upon a program on CBC radio while driving to the dump and going on a
hunter/gathering mission to Robinson’s Country Store in Dorset. The guest was
talking about the evils of using a language in the workplace but others might
not be able to understand. When I looked at the day’s Globe and Mail obituaries
I discovered that M— S— had died. The only person who had ever tried
that other language trick on me back in the 1980s when I was working on a book
project for him. One down.
Then
I spotted that C— J— had died. The insurance agent who persuaded me to
get a disability policy back in the 1980s which had magically vanished into
thin air upon my reaching my 65th birthday … and now that I was 65 my agent had
just as magically disappeared. Two down.
Everyone
knows that things like this come in syrupy threesomes so I wasn’t all that
surprised for what came next. When I logged into Facebook I saw that there were
three people having birthdays that day. Only two actually as two were the same
person with two profiles. I had trouble wishing my first candidate a happy
birthday … FB glitchery or dat ol’ debbil Mercury acting up again? … so I cut
to the chase and went to one of the other people’s pages only to find that his
friends were wishing him a “happy birthday in Heaven” or lamenting about how
much they missed his ugly mug … E— C— had up and died on me. Three
down. Or four if you count that he had two profiles.
Problem
with Cyberspace: it encourages bluster and keeps you away from whatever you
should be working on!
