In the Land of Looney Toons…

Welp, speaking of Looney: I’ve lost the post I was writing. In it, I went on at length about an alarming incident: a surprise visit from a pair of social workers, who apparently were trying to elicit evidence that some of my marbles have rolled out my ears.

Luckily, Wonder Cleaning-Lady had just been here, so the house was spotless. Presumably, then, they did not conclude from a slovenly mess that I’m too marble-free to take care of myself. 😀

At least…I hope not.

Lemme tellya: these folks are REALLY scary. A significant part of their job appears to involve deciding whether you’re well enough to live in your home and take care of yourself. From what I can tell, when they show up, you’re at some risk — very possibly significant risk — of being declared non compos mentis and locked up in a facility.

One of the alarming characteristics of such folks is that they have no sense of humor. They seriously can not distinguish between something you say in jest and something you really mean seriously.

One of my schticks, for example, is the very silly proposition that I’m a-gunna throw myself off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

I have to ask you: How silly is that? And…if a person were really going to do such a thing, do you seriously believe they’d babble on about it in a casual conversation? Holy sh!t. Obviously, if I were going to kill myself by leaping into the air and plunging several thousand feet down a cliff, I wouldn’t tell you about it first. Would I?

So without thinking, I let part of this joke out, and HOLEEEE SHEE-UT! You’d have thought I took out a pistol and stuck its barrel in my ear.

Okay, after I calm the two down a bit, the conversation devolves into a discussion of a silly incident that followed on a quarrel SDXB and I had while he still lived in the ’Hood — years ago!

I don’t even recall what we squabbled about. But in a fit of pique, I stalked out of his house and charged off down the road, figuring to take a walk and burn off some rage.

For reasons that I also do not recall, I took it into my pea brain to walk up an alley. I think the deal was that this alley went straight from the residential street where I was walking to the street just south of my house, effectively creating a short-cut home. In stomping up this alley in the dark, I got turned around, and….eeeps! I got lost! I couldn’t tell which way was north and which way west, the directions I needed to know to get back home.

A party was going in one of the back yards, so I stopped there and asked if they could tell me which way I needed to go to reach Main Drag West. For reasons I do not know, this bunch now calls the cops, telling them a disoriented woman is wandering loose in the alley.

When the cops arrive, they quite reasonably think I’ve lost a few marbles.

You can see which way this is going, right?

I got them to take me back to SDXB’s place, where together we were able to persuade the cops that I was not stoned and not crazy, and that SDXB would take care of me for the rest of the evening.

And so it went: he drove me home; I went to bed; and that (I imagined….) was the end of that.

BUT… Apparently this escapade went into my permanent record. 

Yes. Did you know you have a record, whether or not you’re a criminal type? Be aware that whatever shenanigans you get into, even the most innocent, go into this record…

Now — several years later! — when these social workers show up in my living room, they know all about this long-ago escapade, and they suspect it’s evidence that my marbles are loose.

No kidding. 

• Have I ever been arrested?
• Have I ever gotten into any trouble with the cops, with my employer, at the church, with my fellow crazed drivers?
• Am I stone cold sober at the time?
• Do I act like I’m crazy with these women?
• Am I coherent and level-headed?

Forgodsake: the correct answers to these questions are no, no, yes, no, and yes. I emit all of these correct answers, and prove those answers by my behavior.

Nevertheless, they decide I’m nuts and file a report with their agency to that effect. So now I have an official record as a nut case, and as far as I can tell there is NO way to change that.

Hafta tell you: I don’t know what to do about this episode. Obviously, I need to call a lawyer. But my lawyer recently died! I called his office and got no answer there. So I have no idea which way to jump.

Monday, I’m gonna have to get on the phone and start calling lawyers, at random, until I can get someone to talk with me. And hope I can get them to position themselves between me and the Authorities.

Really. This is scary enough that if my son didn’t live here, I’d pack up my house and leave the state, right now. But he is here. So I’m staying…very possibly to end up in some institution.

Quite some society we live in these days, eh? Orwell set 1984 about 41 years too soon.