Spam

Maybe the best way to deal with electronic junk mail is just to ignore it. It might not actively discourage people and entities from sending it but silence can be a very effective defense against it, or at least a sensible way of dealing with it. Merely deleting such cyber trash takes only the most minimal reflection, time and effort. The only real specifics about me that are readily available on the web are what I've allowed on it: my e-mail address, some background in my Author's Bio, and whatever my own writing can reveal about me to the perceptive reader who visits websites where my work is accessible. For my first couple of online years I received virtually no spam, but within the last several months I seem to receive an average of one such message per day.

This could be a result of my increased representation on the web. I'm intrigued by the suspicious assurances in these messages that ". . .choosing the Remove option" (or some such thing) will delete my e-mail address from their list(s) and will prevent further sendings from them. With only one modification for the protection of the guilty (I changed the e-mail address they gave), I quote verbatim the relevant passage of one such message I received very recently: ". . .Your e-mail Address Removal/Deletion Instructions: We comply with proposed federal legislation regarding unsolicited commercial e-mail by providing you with a method for your e-mail address to be permanently removed from our database and any future mailings from our company. To remove your address, please send an e-mail message with the word Remove in the subject line to: Yeah-Right@Bullticky.com. If you do not type the word Remove in the subject line, your request to be removed will not be processed." I find it interesting, too, that even though I've never responded, in any way, to any spam messages, I've still never received a second communiqué from any of those individual places I've ignored. The "If it 'aint broke, don't fix it" principle applies here. Even one such response from you to them will actually confirm your receipt of their message, and it's entirely possible that this will flag your e-mail address and prompt even more spam, either from them or from others in collusion, regardless of their assurances or words carved in red granite from atop Jebel Musa. It would be a mistake to reveal to spiteful people just what things, in particular, bother you. Similarly, resonding to spam might be tampering with the lid on the proverbial can of worms.

Telemarketers

Seinfeld had a near-perfect response to evening-time phone interruptions from such people. Effectively, he said, "Give me your home phone number and I'll call you back - while you're having your dinner." Answering machines are now common, relatively inexpensive, and easy to use if you just read the instructions. Unless I'm actually expecting a particular, imminent and important call, I screen every phonecall I get. Most of those I know are aware of this. It's imprudent to open one's front door without knowing who just rang the bell. I simply want to know who's phoning me, and I don't want to be bothered by those I just don't want to talk with - at that time, or any other. Sometimes my phone rings and the caller just hangs up as soon as he realizes he's just connected with an answering machine. I can't be sure who they are, but I have my suspicions: I just can't envision a telemarketer leaving his name, number and message on someone's answering machine.

Reunions

I've no idea when my next high school reunion might be - and I really don't care. There are certain people I wouldn't mind seeing again, and others I'd actually like to see, but they're the exceptions. The few good friends I made in high school, though, are people with whom I'm still in touch after all these decades. In those days the people I was friendly with were seen as the eccentrics, and by extension, the outcasts, of the school. I've had the opportunity to go to reunions, but I chose not to. When asked why he refused to cross the English Channel - to receive an honorary doctorate from Cambridge - Johannes Brahms, already a musical icon but always a poor sailor, replied, "I see no reason why I should subject myself to such discomfort." His view was ingenious in its logic, practicality and simplicity. The circumstances differ but the same sentiment applies here. While most people eventually mature with the passage and changes of time, some of my high school era memories are unpleasant enough to remind me that I really have no desire to see most of those who were students when I was, notwithstanding that most were then if not actually children then certainly childish. Experience shows us that sometimes we carry into our maturity some of the negative traits we exhibited even as teenagers. Such traits become features of the truly contemptible person's character, who conducts his or her adult life with the same kind of values we'd expect from the immature teenager. Those who thrive on office politics, gossip, and the despicable and mean-spirited intrigues of the workplace exemplify this. We're all older now but only some of us are wiser.

There is justice, though. It takes the form of my awareness and appreciation that I'm living a relatively happy and really rather fulfilling life, by reason of my writing. Seeing my work in publication is "vengeance" enough for me. In short, I suppose I could say I don't like to stir yesterday's pot - unless, of course, it contained something sweet and memorable. A few of the people I knew were among those ingredients. - One of them was a young lady I knew only slightly but whom I had "worshipped from afar" even since junior high school. I thusly saw her almost daily for six years; she was often my last thought before I fell asleep and my first one when I awoke. The feelings are long gone but the memories remain. All my imaginings and fantasies about her were tender, gentle, and sweet, so it was a Romantic "love" more than anything else. I was so taken with her that I even taught myself how to render her first name in Morse code:

   .-..    .-   ..-    .-.    ..    .

She had the most perfect face I'd ever seen up to that time. Whenever I saw her, my knees would "Richter scale 10" in their shaking and I'd feel Monarch butterflies in my stomach. She had a natural charm and a unique personal sparkle, to which was added an exponential adorability factor that made her very special, certainly in my view. I saw her once after high school, on a bus one morning. When I realized it was her, my knees started shaking, butterflies returned to my stomach, the old memories came flooding back - and the intervening years, all 25 of them, "fell away as though they had never been" (as composer Miklos Rozsa said toward the end of his memoirs). By now I had the maturity to deal with this, so I sat down beside her and we had a wonderful chat. To me she looked the same, and I told her so. "Oh, no, I've changed," she said - and I'll never forget the way she looked at me when I said to her, "Not in my eyes you haven't." Just to have seen her again made it a wonderful morning for me, and that feeling of euphoria lasted literally for days. She's one of the few I'd love to see again, even if only briefly. If by some chance she ever reads this, with or without Morse code, she'll know I'm referring to her and to no-one else.

Our memories can still play tricks on us. I've seen enough change in enough people to know what I'm talking about. For several years after graduation I'd see a number of my high school people on the streets, but that was long ago and by now I haven't seen most of those faces for a very long time. One young lady in particular, who I had always found extremely attractive of both face and figure during high school, is now totally unrecognizable. The only reason I know it's her is that I've seen her intermittently -on the street maybe every two years or so - as time passes. While some don't change very much, others change radically. There's nothing wrong with change, of course, unless it's a negative one that could have been prevented.

Once in a while I pass someone on the street and I realize that I know him or her "from somewhere"; sometimes I remember the source instantly, other times it comes to me only later. One such experience warrants re-telling here. - Some years ago I was standing on the corner of 5th Avenue & 54th Street in Manhattan, waiting for a bus. A young woman passed by; when our eyes met she gave me the biggest, friendliest smile I'd seen literally in years. It's almost as though she was silently saying, Hi! It's nice to see you! Well, she continued walking. I had "recognized" her as (I thought) one of my fellow bus passengers, and I wondered why she wasn't taking the bus on that evening. Just then, the bus pulled up. When I got on, I thought that maybe she wasn't a fellow rider after all, but that she might have been one of my high school or college classmates. It was only when I sat down that I realized who she was - and since Jamie Lee Curtis gave me that smile of hers that day, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for her.

Practical Justice

If I did something wrong, TV's Judge Judy is the last person in the world before whom I'd want to be brought. On the other hand, if I were accused of a crime I didn't commit, she's the only person in the world before whom I'd want to be brought. She seems to have a passion for justice, a passion for what is right. She may not be perfect (who is?), but she outshines all the rest. I can think of no other magistrate in the public eye who even approaches this kind of integrity, and her predilection for logic and common sense should make her the standard by which all other such jurists would be measured. It may be hard to believe, but a woman who had evicted her tenant brought him before Judge Judy - and tried to sue him because he hadn't given 30 days' written notice. This aired on Monday, January 29, 2001, in the New York area, and Judge Judy laughed the plaintiff under the bench.

It seems that most litigants learn nothing from their experiences. They leave the courtroom no wiser than when they entered it, having disregarded everything the judge has told them and maybe even having understood nothing in the first place. One needn't "agree" with the verdict, but it's important at least to understand it. No-one likes being wrong and it can be difficult to acknowledge fault, but doing so is the mark of intelligence and personal integrity. If those in the TV courtrooms represent a sampling of the general public, I shudder to think of what litigants must be like in the judicial courthouses. There seems to be something very wrong with a society that decrees catsup to be a vegetable; that allows a woman to win a lawsuit for spilling hot coffee on herself through her own carelessness; that considers a crudely rendered cartoon about a fictitious family as having the substance and quality for prime time TV - and which actually watches such drivel; that tolerates the mentality and unfairness of stratospherically-paid managers and supervisors oblivious to the contributions of an earnest employee who's paid subsistence wages - but who pounce on every opportunity to complain when he's ten minutes late; and that someone apprehended red-handed in the commission of a felony crime can have the case against him dismissed on "a technicality," or because he wasn't read a series of "rights" he never thought of giving his own victim.

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Jeffrey Dane is an independent historian and researcher whose work appears in both print and online publications and in several languages abroad. He acknowledges that he doesn't have all the answers, but he has every confidence he'll be forgiven for sometimes broaching some uncomfortable and maybe even embarrassing questions.

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