Originally posted by: Corn
Originally posted by: Perknose
Originally posted by: etech
Originally posted by: Perknose
Originally posted by: etech
Originally posted by: Perknose
Originally posted by: Stifko
Originally posted by: Perknose 10/09/1999 4:32PM -- Logged in late that day.
Hey I remember you, I was gonna go and what you cream some creep during lunch in Wash Sq park back in '99.
Ha, ha, yeah. I waited there for an hour but he never showed up. Just another keyboard warrior, I guess.
You waited for an hour to beat someone up over what was said on an internet message board? Amazing.
Crapping in an AT old timer's thread? A new low, even for you. :|
Crapping? Why Perk, I just commented on how amazing it was that someone would take the internet so seriously that they would want to beat someone to a bloody pulp over some posted comments. Don't you think it is amazing?
Relax, tech (as if you ever really could), no one beat anyone else to a bloody pulp. Still, I remain unafraid to face anyone down. Cowards die a thousand deaths (or, like you, just snipe from the safety of your keyboard), a brave man dies but once. You are a small and a bitter man. You sense, but cannot consciously realize, that life has passed you by, and that others are having way more fun than you. So you yap at the heels of others, a bitter ofd biddy. Poor, poor etech.
Far be it from me to stir the pot.......................(OK, well maybe not ) But really now Perky, maybe you should have followed your own "Relax" advice before challenging some moron to cat fight over something said on the forums. I'll be the first to give you props for having a sack large enough to give you the courage to face some unknown pimply faced geek who called you out here on the net, but I am by no means impressed by it, nor the pride expressed in this act........but one does wonder, how bitter can a man be who looks for a fight over something said on the net? The only reason someone wasn't beat to a pulp is because one of two dorks was too cowardly to show up......... You and Etech are the same, as am I. If he's bitter, than so are you, and so am I. So......relax Perky, or don't.
Well, I guess we've officially hijacked this reunion thread (sigh). Sorry,
Hzl, this will be my last post on the subject. There are a flood of memories, and I need to unburden myself.
First of all, Corn, I didn't "challeng(ing) some moron to cat fight", he called me out. He was in New York, and probably saw from my profile that I lived in Pennsylvania. Probably figured he could blow hard and posture like crazy w/o any real life consequences, like so many here do. He was coming on all "gangsta" and said he'd just got out of jail. What he didn't figure on was that I had regular business in NYC and knew all five boroughs well, better than many, many residents. You see, I was a P.I. for fourteen years, and went up there regularly, often into parts of NYC most folks never get to see.
So, I simply called his bluff.
Turns out, specifically, that I was going to take my then live-in girl friend Jessie up to Manhattan to the doctors that next week. Her doc's office was actually on the same street as the NYPD headquarters regularly featured in Hill Street Blues, right near the village. Our routine for these trips was that I'd drop her off, then go get the insanely great bargain at the famous Gray's Papaya (two freshly grilled hot dogs and a cup of fresh papaya juice for something like $1.95) and then go park near Washington Square and take our dog Cinnamon to the dog park where we both would have a lot of fun species watching and mingling and interacting with species specific life forms, each to our own. On a warm, sunny day in the village, nothing beats it.
So I told the guy who so manly said, "I'm gonna beat the living crap out of you" that he could have his opportunity, that I 'd be at the dog park in Washington Square between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm on Tuesday, etc. I helpfully described myself and Cinnamon. I limp, so I'm not hard to spot, you know?
He never showed.
I was never looking for a fight. I never am. I didn't spend 14 years as a PI, going in to the worst neighborhoods at night, almost always unarmed, looking for fights.
But I am eerily unafraid. I trace this back to my extended special adventure just out of high school. A lot of young men that I knew, some of them pretty damn well, are dead. They don't have the pleasure of posting on computer forums. Their earthly pleasures have long since ceased, but not mine. Why me?
Ever since, I've thought of my life as living on borrowed time. Fear, at least physical fear, has long since been driven right out of me. I am just not afraid to die. It is a very liberating feeling. The price of how I acquired it is not.
Don't worry, I'm a pussy about myriad other things. I am not Thor, even in my own mind. We are all squalling babes, yearning for reunion with our Mother's teat. The biggest posers are the ones who would ever deny this.
I don't like posers and blow hards. I am 53 now. I had the great good fortune to grow up in suburbia at the height of the baby boom. After school, about 20-30 of us would get together in the local park and play the sport in season. No adults were involved, yet there were less major disputes and really bad acting in one year than there are from the adults in the stands in even one little league baseball game. In the company of your peers, truth reigns and who you are is how you are, for everyone to know and see. So yeah, I'm old school, and don't take kindly to internet posers puffing out their chests anonymously.
Man, this whole episode brings back a flood of memories. Jessie, my Jessie, I miss you more than words can ever say.
We had been living together at my old apartment in Line Lexington, Pa. for about four years. I had the entire first floor of an old Victorian home, hella spacious, with character out the wazoo. There were bay windowns in the bathroom! We had met at my church. Inside of four months, we packed up her NJ apartment (where she had moved from NYC, where she had moved from her native Chicago) and started cohabitating.
Once, a guy from the old AGN FS/FT was gonna drive down from Berks County to complete a trade in person, but at the last minute my work called, and Jessie was home, so I sent her. The guy was in his 20's (I forget his nic), so he assumed I'd sent my Mom! We had fun with that on the forum for quite some time. "Mom says Hi."
We were just about to get married by then.. Neither of us had ever been married before. She was 40, I was close to being 49. We were so grateful that we had found each other, you have no idea. I had never in my life asked anyone to marry me, though I had been myself asked. I sure asked Jessie, and she said, YES!
We were married in the (spacious and beautiful) backyard of our minister's home. It was the best decision I ever made. Jessie wanted a house of our own, something I had decided I might never have in this lifetime. But she wanted it, so I let her take the lead. It's called loving someone.
The first week, we looked at two houses, both on interesting properties (there is still gorgeous land to be had here in once rural Bucks County, Pa, but you'd better act fast, development is destroying it as we speak). Both houses were reasonable, though, for a reason. Both looked like they had been lived in for 30-40 years by a couple who had then gone off to their respective fates -- small, dingy and dull rooms inside. I am not the master handyman, so this was not going to work for us.
So I sat down with Jessie, took a deep breath, and said: "We're not going to make compromises here. We have to live in what we buy.We're not going to move unless we really love the place, even if we have to spend much more -- whatever it takes. I want something that's light and airy. Anyway, finding the right place is a process, and can take time.
The third house she found, the very next week, is the house we bought. Skylights, catherdral ceilings, arches everywhere, nearly two acres, all out back, with a stream, next to an old farm. My Jessie!
Jessie died July 26th, 2001, of complications from surgery for throat cancer. She was 42. Her car still sits in my driveway. I just can't bring myself to part with it.
So, relax, yeah, good advice
Corn. Life goes on, with or without you. It's like the Delaware River over by New Hope and North -- Frenchtown and Reigelsville. It doesn't give a damn about your triumphs or tragedies, it just keeps flowing. It just is.
*One interesting sidelight that just came back to me: At the same time as that guy wanted to duke it out in NYC, there was an uber young (like 16 or so -- it's all relative, folks) asian kid with extremely poor language skills and a seeming "attention deficit disorder" personality posting that he had a 366 Celeron chip that he could o/c to 605 (I think, this was a long while ago).
At that time, nobody on the forums had yet heard of such a thing, and, especially given his presentation, no one was inclined to believe him. But he lived in NYC, and kept insisting that it was true, so I simultaneously made plans for him to meet me at the dog park during the same hour.
He also never showed, but seems to have genuinely made the effort, according, after the fact, to him and some of his friends who vouched for him (and mentioned that he was a little, you know, hard to pin down at times).
Turns out, subsequently, that there were such chips, and he was telling the truth. You see, you never know. That's why I like to meet people face to face, and take their measure. Truth is always stranger than fiction. Most people, face to face, are forced to get along, and do -- they find a way to. Face to face, it's the way we humans interacted for eons before all this technology made us grandiose and bellicose semi-strangers.