Abused by My Trusting Nature

Ok two weeks ago I received an IM from an AIM user called MysteryWoman97. (I am printing her actual screenname here, you'll see why in a minute.) Now she claimed to have gone to high school with me and my first boyfriend, whom I have been looking for for ten years. (We were best friends for three years before we started dating, and as we know, once I am attached I have tendency to continue caring about the other person. I merely want to know that he is ok and alive and happy. I don't not have delusions that after ten years we will see each other, fall in love all over again, and elope to Bora Bora.) So I started chatting with her.

At the same time I received an Im from another user with whom I was not familiar, Boomhower1971. Now those who know me personally heard me talk about him briefly. Boom is from Tennessee and I find it amusing that his accent comes through during im. In fact, I think imming with him is a riot. My frind Jin cast a warning eye over at me when I said this ( the whole it's easy to like someone who is far away and just words on a screen). To which I responded "Well the reason I like him is I don't know if I am laughing at him or near him." I mean this is a guy who, if he is to be believed, packs boxes for UPS for a living. Hardly a guy I am going to put a huge effort into meeting, but he did keep me amused on my off hours online.

So I chatted with MysteryWoman97 and Boomhower1971 for a while. Finally I signed off. Boom and I continued to chat. I stopped seeing MysteryWoman's sign on and didn't really think anything of it. Until Boom started sending me email. It wasn't that the email was anything wierd or kinky, mainly jokes about the difference between the south and the north, just cute fairly standard forwarding stuff. But then I noticed that he had also forwarded MysteryWoman. So now I had a bad feeling in my stomach.

As jaded and hateful as I may seem to you, my precious readers, people who know me personally will tell you I tend to be more trusting and more kind than I should be. I worry about hurting other people's feelings to the point that it's amazing that I can function at all. ( This is also why I have to come up with some fabulously passive aggressive ways to weasel out of things, I have a very difficult time rejecting people as I don't want to hurt them-we shall talk about this issue at another time)

So I sent an email to Boom asking him what was up with this mystery woman thing. And he sent me the following email back:

Hey Ms. Bunni I got your email that you sent me. Thanks for writing me it is always an honor to hear from you. To answer your question about mysterywoman97 yes I do know her. I met her online about 8 months ago in a chat room. That night when I immed you, she asked me to talk you and mess with you, but I couldn't mess with you. The more I talked to you the more I liked you, I truly enjoy talking to you and I hope we can talk more!

So now I have unknown AIM users gunning for me. My suspicious is that Mystery is one of my former students (Although how a former student of mine would know the full name of my first boyfriend is curious. Whoever it was did some kind of research.) Clearly, whoever it is, knows my screen name (she greeted me by my real first name and not the assumed name that my AOL account is under), which means that she knows me personally. For her to have this kind of hostility, to recruit someone else in order to torture me, indicates a dedication, but also a pettiness. All that work so that some random yahoo can IM me? And then there is the added situation, if we choose to trust Boomhower, which I don't think we do, but if we did, that after all that work it backfired because Boomhower has actually come to like me.

Now why did I post both of their real screennames if I am not trying to rally you into avenging my honor? Well, for the same reason that John Yule's name is up here, for the protection of other people. I am a laid back girl, but when this kind of thing happens it pisses me off to no end. This is how being a trusting and kind person pays off. (In the novel Candide John the Anabaptist and the only virtuous character in the novel dies very quickly essentially murdered by a self concerned sailor. Voltiare the author was trying to tell us something fairly straightforward. So straightforward in fact that Billy Joel wrote a song about it called "Only the Good Die Young"-ok that was about talking some girl into losing her virginity, but the basic premise of the title works here) Some idiot decides to torture me via IM. And for what reason?

( Incidently should you want to torture either one of them of your won free will, feel free.)


And of course there is a part of me that does want to know what exactly what I have done. ( All I can do is think of Gary Oldman in the Professional "What filthy piece of shit have I done now?" Oh I love that man. Gary, where have you gone?)

And of course all of this kicks up my paranoia, and I have to worry about what the hell did I say? And is it being posted somewhere under my real name? Is there some vengeful student out there who is spreading my real personal information out there (like where I live). And again, how did she know the full name of my first boyfriend? It's not like I have used any online services to find him except occassionally type his name into google. Is she eyeballing my wishlist at Amazon as well?

You try to be a good teacher and give them your AIM name so that you can help them with questions. You try and be a good person and even in the middle of New York not have your belief in human decency be totally corrupted. And then something like this happens.

And what am I going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. There is a part of me that wants to know what ridiculousness I could have pulled to deserve such a prank, assuming I deserve it . But one of the things I firmly believe in is that revenge is really not necessary. You see, the one thing you can be absolutely sure of in this life is that everyone suffers. If you want someone to be in pain, all you have to do is wait. I mean look at this chick. Here she has gone to all this effort, finding my first boyfriend's name, recruiting some random guy off the web to harass me, and what's it come to? I didn't say anything embarassing to either one (Being a New Englander I have my guard up with new people-I don't appear to, but trust me nothing I say would be incriminating or embarassing). So she accomplished nothing.

But look at me, I'm a total mess. Depressed constantly. Desperately chasing after men I don't even want. Unable to even find a guy to go to the movies with me on the weekends, when all my friends have bfs and gfs. Terrified of getting my own mail. Still pining for men who could care less if I had fallen down an empty elevator shaft into a pit of rabid mechanical alligators. All she had to in order to get revenge was just sit and back and know I live a fairly miserable existence.

This is the crux of my advice, whenever someone tries to screw with you, or even succeeds, sit down, have a margarita, and know that deep in their hearts they are going to at some point bleed like a superficial cut to the aorta.

So I shall sit here and be confident in my theory.

On the other hand, there are certain parties (all I can think of now is Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys "The underlings of underlings and other assorted minions...") whom I am fairly sure will take upon themselves to protect my honor in the manner of a Jehovah's witness pit bull (joke courtesy of Bloom County). And so I end my post by saying:

RELEASE THE KRAKON!