Week of weird

[derien]

I don't know whether I'm coming or going, today.


I found out Monday that a guy who used to work with us flipped his nut and attacked another guy with a machete. Now, this is the guy we used to call Casper, after Casper the Friendly Ghost. He was always so very calm with passengers. With the rotten people who'd scream in his face he'd just look vaguely baffled. Yeah, he had played professional hockey in the past, so, as Eor commented some violent tendencies might be there. Maybe he just doesn't understand the yelling stage of anger, I don't know. And the guy he attacked was someone he had been working for, after leaving us. As another co-worker said, "bosses can get under your skin." But seriously, we're all quite blown away by this. It just seems like... if he could lose it, this could happen to anyone. This guy he attacked must have been quite the asshole, I think. And I keep saying that I want to write to him or something, but I just have no idea what to say. Mistress of the Night said she wants to visit him and tell him she loves him, but she hasn't done that, either. We're so confused.

Brief, useless news reports:

Boston.com
MaineToday
SeacoastOnline
WMTW
Sun Journal - best article so far, which makes sense since the Sun is in Lewiston. (For those outside of Maine, we refer to the Lewiston-Auburn area as LA.)


And then at some point I heard that I am teaching a class next week. I don't even remember if I got that news Tuesday, Wednesday, or last Friday. Nervous.

And this morning I found out that week after next I'm being shipped out to Los Angeles to take a class. Nervous ++.

And when I talked to Eor about the plane I'm going to have to take out, the afternoon of the 14th, he said that since we're going to have been camping in southern Mass the night before I might have to drive back from Mass on my own. Nervous +++++ as I've never driven in Mass by myself! I have driven in Mass at 2AM, but Eor was copiloting.

So. yeah.

Comments

[littleredhead.livejournal.com]

wow, exceptionally weird week.
(((((you))))))

we can discuss - depending on what time your flight on Sunday is, we can just head home earlier - we're flexible. but didn't you said you have an appt. on the 15th?

I hope your weekend is able to relax you a bit...

[derien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I managed to get the appointment changed to the 25th within minutes after hearing I'd be out of town - for once a dr's office was reachable. It was almost the weirdest part of the week. ;) And hopefully I'll hear today what my flight is, but if not, in the beginning of next week. The person who books these things said it takes longer if the person flying doesn't have a government credit card, but it's not like our director ever hands those out.

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

It's always weird when someone you worked with does something unexpected and unaccaptable. I felt like I needed to see someone after a guy I befriended at work turned out to be a paedophile. But I got over that. And I'M NOT in any way comparing that guy to your friend/colleague, it's just I know what you mean with the not knowing how to feel.

[derien.livejournal.com]

I think the paedophile thing would be worse! Because that would mean it had been an ongoing part of his personality. With Casper I could say that maybe all those times people yelled in his face and he just looked baffled, he was actually storing it up somewhere and it all came out at once. Except what I really suspect is that things did not go well in his marriage after he lost his job with the building guy, and that possibly his wife just left him and took the kid and that was what sent him off his head.

[sospan-fach.livejournal.com]

Oh, goodness me. What a week. (((hugs)))

I suppose, whilst we all know intellectually that, technically, anyone at all could potentially go off the rails like that at some point...we don't let ourselves be fully conscious of it. Well, we can't. How would we carry on otherwise? We'd all be too scared to come within five feet of anybody...

And so it's a horrible, huge blow and shock when something like that happens.

One of the priests who married my parents -- and was considered a family friend -- was put away a couple of years ago after admitting to a stack of counts of indecent assaults on young boys during the 1960s and 1970s, at the boarding school he taught at. :-/ And then you keep second-guessing your interaction with them, and wondering about whether this could have been foreseen or identified...not nice.

That being said, whilst obviously it's up to you what you do, I think if you really want to write to your former colleague, I think that even just a few lines saying that you don't know what to say, but are thinking of him, would help him. (Of course, this unsolicited and not immensely helpful advice of mine may be ignored at your whim.)

On a lighter note...the very best of luck with the classes! I'm sure you'll be fine, nerve-racking though it sounds. Chin up. :-)

I have driven in Mass at 2AM, but Eor was copiloting.

Now, I know you must possibly definitely mean Massachusetts in this.

But...little Brit Catholic here cannot shift the superb mental image of you both ploughing down the aisle of a local RC church, to come to a screeching halt at the altar...

[grin]