Time With Samuel

113

Seeing Samuel was a huge ego boost for me. After years of no support and harassment at the hands of medical doctors and other psychology professionals, he was completely supportive of my 'situation' and my desire to look into and resolve it.

During our first sessions, he asked about my previous experiences with psychological professionals and I told him of the psychologist who'd I first seen during my four day hospital stay in Nineteen Eighty-Seven, which was a good experience, and then the times with the mental health social worker 'Stella Hernandez' who had spent the sessions telling me about her life and problems rather than the other way around, my experiences with the Vocational Rehabilitation psychologist and his bizarre technique & findings, and my brief time with the counselor whose office was at the other hospital in town who denied I had even had a sister and who desperately wanted to find records of a nonexistent time I was in a mental institution. Samuel noted that often times people go into the psychological field to learn about their own issues rather than with the goal of helping others in mind and as a result they will often spend their time using patients as blank slates for their own use.

In my case Samuel felt I made the perfect blank slate given my ambiguous racial background as well as my biologically ambiguous sex and tendency to be initially quiet when meeting people given my stuttering. He could see many people filling in that initial question mark of who and what I was with what was going on in their own minds rather than taking me as I truly was. I noted the many times I had people see me and blow up about things I knew nothing about but they thought I was guilty of; and also of the times when people would see me and suddenly feel I was the right person to unburden themselves about dark matters in their lives.

Samuel agreed that these occurrences fit into his 'blank slate' theory. Some people saw me as a way to externalize their own neuroses, in the case of things people didn't like about themselves they would paint them onto me. In the case of people who needed to unburden themselves, they could imagine me as the person they needed to confess to as there was nothing definitive about me to dissuade them and also, seeming to appear outside of the social norm, I wasn't perceived as a threat that would, or socially could, judge them for their confession. He noted that often times people of any particular majority would often feel more comfortable telling secret things to people of a perceived minority as 'if it ever got out' they could use the person's minority status as a reason why that information shouldn't be given credence.

I mentioned a time when someone said they believed I could 'read peoples souls', Samuel returned that it was people's reactions to me that gave me the insight into other peoples' souls. In many ways I was like a walking-taking Rorschach Test for some people.

As part of coming up to speed about me, Samuel requested to get the records of my neuropsychological evaluation from 'Dr. Maverick'. I agreed though pointed out my past experiences that doctors would use those contacts to verbally pass on B.S. about me to other professionals. He said we could give it a try and see what happens. I signed the paperwork and he sent off for the records. When they arrived he told me that while she might have told me verbally that my pain in the left side of my head and subsequent permanent deficit in February of Nineteen Eighty-Nine 'might have been a stroke' she had noted it affirmatively in her records, so the diagnosis stood. He then told me a few sessions later that 'Dr. Maverick' was having to move her practice out of town and she was now disavowing that diagnosis in order to avoid further trouble with the Colorado Medical community.

Still, from her records Samuel confirmed my genius I.Q. level and explained to me that my score meant I was 'at or above the doctorate level in most subject areas'. He clarified that it was 'at or above' as the tests were standardized to the doctorate level and since I had maxed out in so many areas, for all we knew I was above the doctorate level and they simply couldn't detect that with the test. I joking asked him if that was why I had so many problems with medical doctors, since the saying was 'doctors make the worst patients' and I was 'at the doctorate level'. We laughed at that and then he confirmed it might be the case as I was sharp enough to sometimes see through the doctors' actions and realize they weren't making logical sense in what they were doing or saying.

He asked if I wouldn't mind taking one of his own favored psychological tests and I agreed. When the results came back, it found me to be normal BUT that it flagged that I seemed to be hiding negative information about myself. When we discussed what that might mean I noted the handful of questions it had asked about presumed past sexual partners and resulting problems with them. As I had never had any sexual partners I therefore reported never having problems with them. Just to see, we picked one of those questions and changed the answer to 'have had a problem with' and reran the results. The following meeting he affirmed that the test now found me to be normal without any reservations. We concluded the test should be updated not to assume everyone taking it had been sexually active beforehand.

When the topic reached to my mixed-sex 'situation' it ultimately came down to first making sure I was fully aware of the social pluses & minuses of each gender role, and helping me deal with other people who were uncomfortable with me given my ambiguity and possible future choices. In the case of gender roles he felt I had a pretty good handle on them as I had started to observe and consider the differences since my surprise puberty at age thirteen. In the case of helping people it was more of the same sort of 'unofficial psychological counseling pointers' that Jude had given me for dealing with medical doctors, to first calm any situation down as much as possible and then spend time asking questions to bring into the open the source of the other person's discomfort and discuss it.

When it came to what choice I would make, as Dr. 'Czarniecki' concluded that I couldn't be biologically any more 'a man' than I already was, and the trial estrogen injections had made the sudden fevers I had been experiencing during the previous decade of my life go away, it seemed a simple choice to me to consider normalizing as female. That decision would have been much harder for me if we had still been in nineteen fifties America with its strict and confining life choices women had in that day and age, but by the nineteen nineties women had made huge strides toward equality in America. What level of discrimination that was left seemed little different to what I had already faced with my mixed-race background and life long stuttering. When it came to seeing medical doctors, I couldn't imagine things being worse than what I had already experienced with them while being intersexed. On that point, Samuel agreed.

As women more often than not had longer hair than men, Samuel recommended I grow out my hair and see if I liked having it that way...

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The Beast

109

At first going from having infinite free time and then back to full-time College was a bit of an adjustment; I was suddenly having to keep to a daily schedule again and perform tasks other than the ones I chose at the spur of any moment. But only within a few weeks my mind lit up with other things to think about and cognitively toy-with during my days. One semester, I had a 'business' class as well as a 'marketing' class. Marketing class was more interesting as it gave me insight as to what physically formed, versus what the intentions were for, various types of advertisements.

Yet one day in 'business' class I perked up when the teacher proffered what he felt was obvious to him, that someone could buy the vacant two story national bus building downtown and turn it into a drive through grocery store. The 'Trailways' bus line was the competitor to the more dominant national bus line in the country. But times were hard for it and they eventually had to close their branch in our town by the nineteen eighties. Their building, designed to have the buses pull through the lower story while the passengers would wait on the upper floor, had been empty ever since.

Our business teacher envisioned people driving into the bottom floor and giving their grocery lists at the pull in. It would be sent to employees upstairs with the stock and they'd bag it for them and send it down to the drive through exit, where the customers would have already paid, and the groceries would be placed in the car. It was the grocery store equivalent of a fast food place. While other students in the room murmured various notes of surprise or acceptance, given my years in the grocery field I knew it would never work. First off the top floor of the building wasn't large enough to hold the variety of food stuffs that customers would expect. Second, running through all that stock to pick out the items people wanted would take far more time than picking a burger out of a bin. And while it was annoying enough when your fast food order arrived and had one or more wrong items in it, could you imagine families paying fifty to seventy-five dollars for a grocery order and have bags placed into their car with them assuming it'd be correct on faith and just drive off? For something like this to work, there would need to be strict verification of the orders, when given and once delivered. But including this additional verification time would leave customer cars sitting in the lower level for up to half an hour. Why would customers find this more desirable than picking the items they wanted off the shelf and seeing for themselves what they were getting as they checked out?

Not liking the business teacher's idea struck me as writing for a television show struck me. If I watched an episode I didn't like, my mind would go to work on figuring out how to do it better. In the case of this drive through grocery store idea, I couldn't help myself but to dwell on it and work up a viable alternative. By the end of the week I had the better idea in mind and it was just sitting there waiting to be delivered when the business teacher assigned us our final project 'to create a detailed business plan for a business of our choosing', and the marketing teacher's Final was 'to create a marketing plan for an imagined business of our choosing'. Needless to say I was primed and ready!

Creating the business plan was the hardest of the two whereas given my previous years of writing, desktop publishing, knowing artists, and even failing to produce an audio drama on tape, I was quickly done with the marketing campaign and example advertisement scripts. In the case of the marketing material, some of it was television commercial scripts and while I couldn't film the actual ad, I knew I could make the soundtrack for it using my audio equipment and multi-voice talent. So for the visuals I approached Suzi, the founder of our defunct writer's group and asked if she could help me out. Before coming to our town and forming the writer's group, she had lived in a rural part of Colorado and formed an artist's group there to help feed her own drawing and painting interests. I knew what I needed the various pictures to show for the television commercial storyboard and asked her if she would be willing to draw them up for me. As I had hoped, since it tickled an area of her creative talents that she hadn't used in years, she was happy to do the minimalist artwork I wanted.

While she worked on that, I then focused on the business plan and tapped into my long time friend Jeff for insights. As he had grown-up watching his father create and run a dry cleaning chain, he had a broad knowledge of what businesses would need to get off the ground as well as technical names for the various types of equipment I'd need. Discussing my 'alternative' grocery store concept with him over the course of a few hours he helped me nail down the broad details I'd need to keep in mind and budget for. Then it was time to start calling the various companies who would be involved in such a business and crunch the numbers. In the case of building costs, I contacted a construction company touting their recent work on a grocery store building they were nearing completion on. The secret was not to ask how much that project had cost, but how much a project like that would cost; thus client confidentiality was maintained as they gave me the rounded off, but closely accurate figure. I then called the utility company and did the same thing for the utility costs of such a place, giving two different existing businesses I felt would be on par in their energy usage. While she couldn't have told me the figures for either business without breaking confidentiality, since I had given her two businesses to look at, she could give me the average of the two which was close enough for my plan's estimate.

There would be a need for large refrigerated rooms, one each for chilled items & frozen items. I could estimate the size of the rooms based on my own knowledge of the percentage of a store dedicated to those items. I then contacted an industrial refrigeration company in Denver and asked them for an installation estimate which would include specialized insulating concrete floors, the insulated metal sheathed housings and the specialized piping and compressors for those rooms. I was so detailed when giving this information to the company representative on the phone that he assumed I was doing this for real and said he'd draw up a detailed estimate for me and call back with the figures at the end of the week. Given the level of work he was going to do, I decided not to correct him and tell him I was only doing a project for College.

Touching base again with Jeff I figured the number of initial employees I'd need to start the company and he provided the associated costs beyond an hourly wage for each. He also helped me fill in the broad strokes and costs associated with an online ordering system for the business and I had all of the information I needed.

I created the business plan with at least a two year financing window for it to become established and start breaking even. Adding the figures from the industrial refrigeration company when they called back, I was done with my full detailed business plan for my delivery or pickup grocery store business. People could place their order online, or if desired with a live person over the phone, and it would be assembled overnight and then they could pick it up at their leisure the following day or it could be delivered to their home at a specific hour. Given the overnight assembly of the order, this provided plenty of time for the customer to confirm what they wanted with their order ahead of time, then a group of employees to roam the warehouse and collect the items needed for the order, and finally a string of people to validate that the order had been properly filled with all of the items desired. Based on a nineteen ninety business understanding I didn't include the mechanical automation that would now be naturally incorporated into the business if pursued today.

Picking up the artwork from Suzi a day before hand, I arrived at the College with my audio soundtrack tape in hand and waited for many of the other students to present their work first in marketing class. I found I had little competition to worry about. I quickly described the business I had created my ad for and when I played the tape and displayed the story board pictures in sequence on the overhead projector as the tape ran, I knew I was doing well. The wide-eyed silence of the other students was all I needed and I soaked it up. I got top marks from the teacher. For business class I came in and while the other students placed their handful of pages long business proposals on the teacher's desk for him to review by the end of the week, I plopped my folder on his desk with my business plan and, just for fun, included the advertising story board drawings and soundtrack tape as well.

Having grown up with little positive feedback from parents or teachers as a child, I had learned to live without it. In order to survive I developed my own sense of when I was doing well or not and for anyone's feedback to have any impact on me they had to provide the facts to show how their opinions were grounded. Without that grounding, others' opinions were gravely disadvantaged in my eyes when compared to my own self-judgment. This has left some people baffled when I would curse myself for not having something done to perfection while they thought it was 'good enough', but this would also lead me to unshakably know when I had done a good job, regardless of what some other people might think.

This built in sense of self appraisal & judgment Daina found to be my biggest drawback. But assessing & judging it for myself, I've found it to be my greatest strength.

Why do I feel the need to explain it's not ego based...?

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Over Achieving

107

Focusing on College in July of Nineteen Ninety-Two, I was quickly the apple of the computer instructor's eye and I wowed and amazed him with my understanding of logical routines and computer obscurities. Going through the text book we came across the statistic that a company could only expect to complete ten lines of debugged code per day, per person, for any project. I felt that number was low, but the instructor pointed out it included systems analysis & designing, documentation writing, and testing time, not just the time it took to write the code. I still felt that was a little low and so the teacher decided to challenge me. Our first project was to write a stock tracking program, where the user would manually input various stock codes and daily numbers and the program would provide various averages which the user could use to decide if it was a good time to buy or sell. These were the minimum needs but we'd get brownie points if it exceeded those needs. Given the complexity of the task, he broke the class into two groups who would each work on the project separately... And then there was me: I'd be working alone. We had two weeks for the project and he wished us luck and offered to be available to provide any help required.

The following week I came in with the printed documentation I had finished for the program. I handed it to him along with a disk. He asked what the disk was for and I said, somewhat confused by his question as I thought it would be obvious, that it was the program. I also gave him my time sheet noting how many hours I had been working on it and when during the past week. I noted that I had averaged thirty lines of debugged code... an hour. He couldn't believe it and did the math himself assuming I had never slept, visited with friends, or eaten since he had assigned the task. Even with all of that factored in, he figured I had produced around three hundred lines of code per day. He made sure I remained as a group of one for all future coding projects during the class so I wouldn't just quickly put out the code and leave any team mates in the dust without them having a chance to code themselves. I thought that made sense.

Toward the end of the Summer semester came a surprise call from VocRehab. They had worked out a one month trial job for me at RMT. I would work at the complex on tasks they needed, but given the red tape of them being a national corporation, rather than my working there and being paid by them, and then them asking for reimbursement on my initial pay, VocRehab was going to pay me directly for the first month I worked there. I would be like a free 'independent contractor' for the company as they got to review my skills and decide if they wanted to hire me. I readily accepted the offer and my counselor noted that I'd need to get myself some formal clothing for my time working there. That threw me for a loop as I had none, but told him it wouldn't be a problem.

I asked Daina if she could loan me the money to buy a work wardrobe and I'd pay her back once I got my VocRehab check. Enthusiastically, she agreed and we were soon off to thrift shops in search of what I could find. Ultimately we got me about five short sleeved button up shirts. Given how light the material was, I would need to go back to the ACE bandage binding technique and even wear an additional white tee shirt under the work shirt to better disguise the presence of the ACE bandage, itself. Then we picked out a bunch of neck ties that would go along with the shirts and Daina, thankfully, knew how to tie them and showed me. Once again for ventilation, I hoped the short sleeved shirts wouldn't look out of place as I'd start the job at the tail end of August. While I still had trepidations about my ability to get a job at a corporation as I'd known in the past they would often require passing a physical as an employment requirement, I pushed that fear aside for now.

My work uniform set, I next had to deal with school.

I could take my Finals the week before the end of the semester and be done with my classes a week early so they wouldn't interfere with the start of my new job. But I would have to switch to night classes for the Fall semester to ensure there wouldn't be a conflict for the last two weeks of my one month trial job. Further, one of my degree requirements was to perform a 'work study' job. This would normally take place once I was reaching the end of my college time and just before I would get my degree. But as the opportunity was too good to pass up, I asked the administration if I could count my month at RMT as my work study requirement. Not only could I, but normally the best their students could hope for was a job copying diskettes as their work study so the College was thrilled that one of their students was going to be doing their time at RMT! Checking with the VocRehab counselor, he saw no conflict with it, either.

The next problem was my lack of a car. It turned out the local buses only ran during the daytime hours and the closest bus stop to the RMT complex was still a mile away. While taking the bus to RMT would be very problematic given the long walk to & from the bus stop while wearing my minimum layers of clothing, once night school started I'd definitely need a ride to & from College at a minimum. Daina offered to let me use her car, effectively I would keep her car overnight and then pick her up in the morning and take her to work, then drive to my RMT job. As the end of the school day came, she would work late on paperwork until I was done for the work day and then pick her up at the school. We'd have dinner someplace and then she'd drop me off at College allowing her to keep the car for any evening errands and then pick me up after classes. I'd drive back to her place and drop her off and I'd go home for homework and bed. While this plan worked on paper and we didn't have to worry about it during the first two weeks as I didn't have classes... Once the plan was in full swing Daina quickly chaffed at the sudden increase in gas costs and having to spend ten hour days in her classroom. She insisted and I agreed that once RMT hired me after the trial month, I was to promptly buy my own car.

I was heady with the thought that I would soon be able to buy myself my own car once again and no longer have to depend on free local bus passes from Vocational Rehabilitation.

When I arrived at RMT for my first week, I met the senior manager who had come up with the plan and was then introduced to the manager of the X400 messaging group who I'd be working for. He in turn introduced me to the 'team lead' who would be in charge of me and in return that team member took me to my empty cubical. It would take the next two days just to get the cubical set up and I used the time in between to tour the building alone with my little badge to defend me and spend some time under the skylight lit library area of the complex paging through the Digital Vax manuals; the machines I was told I was going to be working with once I had a computer terminal.

On the third day I was ready for my first assignment, the team lead looked through the 'needed code changes list' and assigned me to change a single line of an existing program. That took me a couple of hours, mainly just familiarizing myself with the system of getting the source code from the coding library and then compiling and testing my change before turning it in well before lunch time. I was ready for my next assignment. He had thought it would have at least taken me the whole day and asked that I come back to him after lunch for my next assignment.

While I didn't have cash to afford lunch, I did pocket a few dollars from my tiny savings to pay for my daily soda at their cafeteria, it was a gorgeous two story open area made of concrete which had an ambiance between a cave and a cathedral. I'd take a seat in a far corner and spend my time slowly sipping the soda and watch as the employees would trickle in for the lunch hour and socialize. Some would eat & run while others suddenly realized the clock after over an hour of socializing and rush to finish eating before parting from friends and returning to work.

When I returned to the team lead, he simply handed me the rest of the 'to do list' hoping that would keep me busy for the rest of my time. When I turned in all the completed work to him at the end of the week, he pointed out he meant 'for the rest of my time during the trial month', not for the week as I had assumed. He didn't know what else to assign to me and I had three weeks left to fill. He said he'd find something for me by the next week and I could leave early for the weekend. As Daina had needed the car for work during that day, I walked to that nearest local bus stop a mile away. Once I was there, I was soaked through with sweat and was glad I wasn't having to make this walk twice each day.

The following week I came in and the team lead had decided to stump me. They had always wanted an X400 message dump utility for debugging purposes but never had the time to create one. Thus my job would be to create that utility from scratch. He wished me luck and told me where to find documentation on the X400 message interchange file format.

The X400 messaging format was how companies exchanged eMails with each other over the developing internet. While internal messaging formats were often just text files, the X400 message format had to take in all considerations as to what sort of message might be passed through the internet. Not just text, but voice, telex, faxes, etc. As a result, the file format for a message was complex, if not convoluted, and the freakiest thing I had ever seen. Not only was the message dump utility going to have to be complex as well, it would also have to serve as my learning tool to come to grips with the file format itself. On the second day I asked if I could have sample X400 messages to use for testing. They got that data to me by the end of the day. By the third day I realized I wanted more time to work on this each day, but as I was tied to borrowing Daina's car and keeping to her schedule, I couldn't return during the evenings to keep working with the sample data. I asked if they had an option where I could dial in from home? They did and since I already knew Jeff had a spare Digital terminal I could borrow for a few weeks, I was soon spending my hours at home working on the same code I was working on during the day. Knowing by my third week I'd have to accommodate college classes into my schedule, I made a weekend long effort to finish the utility.

I returned Tuesday morning, after Labor day weekend, and asked the team lead if he'd like to review the output of my utility. He assumed I meant review the proposed output of the utility and said I could bring a copy to his desk, instead I arrived with the program on a disk. It took him a moment to understand it was a working program I wanted to show him and then he gave it a try. He was impressed that it was already a working program, but felt the output was too technical in nature: 'Priority = Normal, From = Bob'. He felt it wasn't readable enough. The output had to be readable, but when I asked him what that would be, he didn't know. I'd have to just work it out for myself and then he'd let me know if it was good or not. Returning to my cubicle I easily foresaw days of frustration coming up with a new output format for him to nix and my returning back to the drawing board to try again.... and again.... and again.

Instead I got the idea of attaching my FlexBase code library to it. A system I had developed in the early eighties to serve as a universal online site code base, it worked on the concept of 'you draw-up the format you want an online page to display and it would determine all of the logical needs to fill it in' for each unique user. In this case I married in the form based logic and allowed the X400 message dump routines to fill the variables with the message values. This took me almost three whole days to complete and test and then another hour making the first form template for the output. I took this new, 'more readable' output to the team lead. While he thought it was better, he still had some changes he wanted to it. I left and went to my terminal, tweaked the form template and reprinted the message data and was back at his cube within ten minutes with the updated print up and a huge smile on my face. He assumed I had made this 'example page' by hand and gave some more recommendations to tweak it. I didn't let on and returned to my cube, tweaked the form, reprinted and was back at his cube. He liked that one and asked how long it would take for me to incorporate these changes into the program. I told him I already had and this was the actual output.

I treasured that look on his face. Jaw agape, eyes wide, reading his mind that if he hadn't already seen the speed of my work the previous two weeks he wouldn't have believed it. But even knowing that it was still hard for him to accept and he asked me how I could have changed the output of the program so quickly. I told him of my FlexBase code library and showed him the template form it used and he tweaked it himself and reran the program to see the updated, instant results. In High School my coding skills had been admired, but as I was a 'big fish in a small pond' I really couldn't gauge if I was truly that good, or simply the best looking dog given what little competition I had. I knew my time at RMT would be my first true chance to find how good my skills really were, and it didn't disappoint!

The team lead asked for my source code and told me I could leave early for the weekend. The following Monday he came to my cubical with a huge smile on his face. He pointed out that he had a Masters Degree in software development, that looking at my code Friday afternoon he had become so impressed by it that he spent the rest of the weekend going through it for fun. He admired the logical structuring of my code and my use of tables to drive the code flow, not to mention the output coding which allowed the easy to modify template. He thought this was some of the best code he had seen in his life, and he was highly recommending me to be hired as an employee by the company. He gave me a copy of his letter of recommendation and his manager was reviewing it as we spoke.

For the rest of the week, more and more high level employees and managers paraded into my cubicle to see me run the code, promptly update the form with their suggestions as they watched and reran the program affirming their requested output changes. By the middle of the week they wanted to offer me a job...! There was just one little question: ''What degree do you have?''

I noted that I was self taught and didn't have a degree, as such, but was currently in night College to complete my Associates Degree by the turn of the year as I continued on to a Bachelors of Science. There seemed to be some turmoil with this answer and then they asked me when I thought I'd have that Bachelors in hand? In another year and a half, or so.

No job for me.

The head of the company on the other side of the nation had recently dictated that he wanted to have 'the smartest work force of any telecommunications firm' and by 'smartest' that meant everyone had to at least have a Bachelors Degree to get hired. As I didn't have that degree in hand, it didn't matter what level I performed at, they simply couldn't hire me.

So I got my work study completion form filled out by the manager as well as a glowing review written for the Vocation Rehabilitation people to have. Then I was back home at the end of the four week period with nothing but college studies to again fill my time.

I felt like I was the most highly praised applicant they wouldn't hire!

(at least I no longer had to worry about passing a physical examination to work there.)

Skiing Downhill

89

By the Summer of Nineteen Ninety-One, my brain was working at its peak. Like a long dried out sponge it completely soaked in every bit of every moment. I had never experienced life like this. I did all of the same things I always did, but I could now see how each nuance added up to the end of each day in complete detail. When Daina and I would make errand runs for her and she wasn't sure where she had seen something, I could recount to her in complete detail all of the stores we had been to each day, each item she had looked at and which location of the store it had been at. Hours after the drive from the stores to my apartment, I could recall which lights had been green and which ones we had to wait at. I could work on my computer while watching the the cable news and keep complete track of them both without pause. One time Daina called and I placed the television on mute and continued working on my computer project, watched the silent picture and discussed the next day's plans with Daina and never lost track of any of them. Daina openly wondered if I was transcribing our conversion as we talked given my typing and I assured her I wasn't but instead working on something else as we spoke. She expressed annoyance at that and asked that I not do it anymore. So I stopped my typing but continued to think of the code I needed to do next while following the television and talking about the next day's plans.

I was running Daina ragged with frequent hikes now that she was on summer break from teaching. Never wanting to take the same trail twice too closely together, we had started to scrounge for trail maps and seek more obscure parks just to continue with the variety my mind desired. On one of these hikes, Daina just couldn't continue to the peak and wanted to turn around but still zested by my regained health I wanted to continue and she reluctantly agreed to wait where we were and I could finish on my own. I thought it would take me fifteen more minutes, it ended up taking just under an hour and Daina was very angry with me for keeping her waiting that long. I apologized and then suggested a faster way down rather than using the trail.

In the southern rocky mountains there are spillways of little crumbled rock which form a relatively smooth slope. One time when we had to cross one, I realized my feet would sink in if we took slow steps, but they would slide along the top downhill when one moved quickly. I recommended that we 'ski down' the straight spillway rather than take the serpentine trail back to the bottom. Daina was game after I showed her how to start and watched as the tumbling little rocks rolled beneath my feet as I slid down the first tens of feet quickly in large steps, then tilted my heels back to let my feet sink into the slope and bring me to a stop. Daina gave it a try, but more often came to a stop than slid along. I presumed it was from my past experience skiing where she just needed some practice and continued my way down, quickly descending a few hundred feet in little over a minute. Yet Daina kept sinking in and thus had to pull her feet out of the slope of little broken rocks more often. When she finally caught up to me a few minutes later, she wanted to return to the path for the rest of the descent and I agreed. We sat briefly on a large rock to pull off our shoes and pour out the jagged little bits that had fallen inside before we continued.

One time we reached the bottom of a path and her car was in sight, she suddenly cried out. Turning to look, she had been paying attention to the sight of her car, not the branches of the tree she was passing, and one jabbed her in the eye. Her eye swelling up and painful, she swore for a bit and then debated what we were going to do and then asked if I could drive her to the emergency room. I noted that I didn't have a drivers' license as I gave it up due to my declining health, but as I was now feeling great again and fully able to pay attention while driving, I was game for it as long as it was all right with her. I remembered in New England that a kid without a license could practice driving when an adult was in the car, so I assumed the same would be true for Colorado.

It was great being behind the wheel again and the emergency room doctor found that Daina's eye was just bruised, not punctured, and would be fine with some time to heal. He put a gauze cover over it and I drove Daina back to her condo where we visited for a bit, and caught up on previously taped shows. When it was time for me to go home, though, she didn't feel up to driving and told me I could just take her car. I agreed, but with some trepidation as this time I knew there wouldn't be a legal fig leaf for my driving without a license. Especially as it meant I'd also have to drive back the next day to return Daina's car. Still, I made sure to drive home perfectly and then flawlessly back so as to not gain the interest of any police cars.

For my birthday this year I decided to get a fresh driver's license. The bureau had moved in the six years since I had gotten my last drivers' license, but while in a bigger space handling more people, they still had the same driving test evaluator as my last time. I hoped I could just renew my old expired license and thus avoid dealing with him again given how our last experience had gone, but after my photo was taken I was told I'd need to have my driving re-evaluated given the number of years since I was last licensed to drive. This meant joining the long line of people waiting for driving tests and given the estimated wait time, Daina left to run some errands while I waited there. A half hour later, only having moved about a third of the way down the line, my name was called to the front desk. Arriving there, they handed me my license. Did this mean I didn't have to take the driving test after all? I decided not to ask and left the building. I figured I could always say I didn't know better if they came after me, or called me at home about why I hadn't stayed for the driving test. But they never did.

I realized how much writing computer code was like skiing downhill. The computer was the skis, the user was the skier and the computer program you wrote was the ski slope. If you wrote the code correctly, the program reached the end and the user was happy. If the code wasn't well written, the user had some surprising bumps along the way and, at the worst, crashed and had to get up and start over again. As I coded, I thought of the ski trail, the side paths one could take as an alternative to the main slope, add program checks to make sure the process wasn't going too fast or losing control, and then the satisfying crescent moon stop to bring the experience to a close.

Knowing I was cognitively back and raring to code something, Jeff put me in touch with the head of the 'Front Range Firefighters Association'. While fire fighters & stations could dial into Jeff's online site and stay abreast of the Fire Fighting message forums, there were too many of them jostling for a chance to connect to one of Jeff's incoming land lines. The solution was to create a point-to-point message system which would allow the various fire fighters to download the forum mail straight to their own computers, read and reply at their leisure, and then have their computers upload their messages back to Jeff's site for inclusion and distribution. Checking into the process, I found there were quite a few shareware pieces already available to do this, but each piece had its own configuration file format and they had to be laced together to get it all done: One program to handle the dialing, one program to perform the eMail exchange, one program to allow the end user to read and respond to the messages, and then a chain program to run all of them in sequence and trap errors between them.

I told him I could do it and agreed to in return for a pizza once I was done. Rather than write everything from scratch, I just wrote an installation program and a configuration manager. The installation program ensured all of the shareware pieces were properly placed on the destination computer and then the configuration program asked for and managed all of the configuration info each program might need and wrote it out in their specific file formats once it was entered or updated. For this, I used the FlexBase system I had developed seven years earlier as a universal online site hosting system. It allowed the user to define the appearance they wanted through a simple type-it-the-way-you-want-it-to-look system and let the code handle all of the behind the scenes work to make it happen. By using this preexisting code library of mine, I was able to just give it the template for the user screens and the templates for the various output configuration files and the FlexBase system handled the rest. Ultimately the most work I had to do was code up the 'download now' or 'read messages' choice screen and repeatedly test the system to ensure it wouldn't crash on the various types of IBM PCs and clones it might be installed on. Given that Jeff's machines and my own made a varied lot, it gave me plenty of chances to make the package fail and learn how to improve it.

After only a couple of weeks, the combined installation package was done and I uploaded it to the head of the association to distribute to his members. While I stayed in touch with him for the subsequent few months in case there was a problem to address, there never was and the package became quite popular and I even made variations of it for other online sites in town. It was my first major coding project since my health had returned and I was thrilled with the result!

Though I forgot to take up that pizza... Probably too late to ask for it now?

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Wanting To Work

88

With my health suddenly restored in a matter of months after six years of decline, I could have just found the first grocery store job in town. But as the experience had massively derailed my life, I felt I deserved a more thoughtful return to the employment pool. Talking about this with my counselor, Jude, he too agreed that it made sense and recommended I go to the state's Vocational Rehabilitation office and let them manage my return to work. When I mentioned misgivings based on my experience with them three years earlier, he noted that they had probably forgotten about me since then and let's see what a fresh intake evaluation would find. As VocRehab was just three blocks from my apartment, anyhow, I thought I might as well go and see.

Arriving at their office, it seemed unchanged by the years gone by and I introduced myself to the receptionist. This one didn't burst out laughing at my stutter. Fearing I might be assigned to the same counselor who had vehemently rejected me the first time, I was luckily assigned to a different counselor. I actually walked passed the earlier counselor a few times in the office, but he didn't seem to recognize me. This new counselor, I'll call 'Cindy', was a middle aged woman who lead me to her office and sat me down for a chat. I noted my health history and recent improvement and desired to finish my college degree. She thought we should wait with that option and first look for jobs that I could do today. What was I interested in? I told her of my extensive history in computer programming and while I didn't have a degree at it, she thought she still might be able to find me a job in the field. But first I'd have to be evaluated by their on-site psychologist. Fearing that they had the same disturbed psychologist as before, I noted that I could possibly provide a report for them. She then pointed out that if I told her I was receiving psychological counseling it would probably mean I couldn't be accepted by them for help under their rules. Did I want to say I was seeing a psychological counselor? ''I guess not,'' I said, message received.

''Good,'' she said and left the room to set up the evaluation appointment with their own guy as I remained and looked around her office. I noticed a photo of what I guessed to be her daughter. A head-shot placed prominently in the room, it showed her mouth in the shape of a smile, but her eyes looked very hurt and haunted. It reminded me of the photo my mother had me pose for, despite my not wanting to, after my high school graduation. Cindy returned and the evaluation appointment was all set.

When I returned the following week, their on-site psychologist was indeed the same guy as my previous evaluation, but he didn't recognize me either. I guessed given the number of faces flowing through the office each year for the past three years, he had long since forgotten me. This time, rather than the giant bubble test to evaluate my psychological fitness, he had changed to what I guessed he thought was a better method of cracking people's psyches: A hand writing evaluation. I was to write a couple pages about myself for him to review. When I noted my problems writing by hand, he gave me an extra fifteen minutes to work on it in his office. He then went on break and I spent the next half hour writing something up. Given the need for speed, I resorted to my old two handed technique where my primary hand formed the printed letters while my other hand's fingers helped to steady the painful tremors.

When he returned and saw the results, he barked at me because I was supposed to have done the sample in cursive, not print! But as he hadn't told me that and he didn't have more time to have me do it all over again, he deiced to work with what I had written and had me next see his assistant for a fresh I.Q. test. A friendly girl, I think this was the highest I.Q. score I had ever received, though in reflection that might have been in part because I had just had my I.Q. evaluated by the neuro-psychologist a few months earlier and it seemed to be the exact same test. Once the I.Q. test was done, and a career aptitude test which showed I should either find a job in computers or writing, I was sent back to the psychologist's office where he glared at me and said he couldn't conclude anything about me from my hand writing sample and suspected I had intentionally disguised my writing in order to hide something. At my blank returned look, he decided not to worry about it and I was deemed fit for Vocational Rehabilitation Services to help me.

With my return visit to Cindy, she was happy with the evaluation results and said she had the perfect job for me! It was a start-up company Data Acquisition Systems and they needed computer knowledgeable people to help get the company going. Cindy told me that the way things worked was they would hire me, and after my first two weeks, VocRehab would reimburse them for my initial paycheck. When I arrived at their office, it was actually the management office of a neglected shopping center and of the three people there, two were in their early twenties and brothers who were 'forming' the business and the third man was another self taught computer professional about ten years older than me. We talked at length about what they wanted to do with the company but beyond picking out the name they really didn't want to define it. It would have something to do with computers because they saw that as the future of business, but what precisely they weren't quite sure. The other computer guy and I were to return the following week when they had things sorted out.

Returning the second week, the other computer guy had decided not to come back. The two brothers explained that ''He didn't get the vision of the company.'' So the three of us spent the day still trying to figure it out and finally concluded that what we needed was to come up with a good motto for the company and from that the two brothers would better know what the company would be doing. I offered ''DAS ist gut'', I think it was a common phase from the old Hogan's Heroes television show, regardless of where I got it from the two brother's got the reference and burst out laughing. By noontime they still hadn't settled on a motto and they broke for lunch. Given that I didn't have spare cash to buy myself lunch based on my income level, I roamed the sidewalked front of the long shopping strip and glanced in its mostly vacant store fronts. An hour later, we reconvened and the brothers had decided we needed to put the motto debate aside and work on the dress code, next. They felt we should all be in suits & ties from now on; given my history of feeling like a cross dresser when in formal clothing, I noted that computer people worked in the back room and so dress style wouldn't make an impact on potential customers... But the brothers agreed amongst themselves that a 'professional look' resulted in 'professional work'. That topic using up half of the afternoon, the older of the two brothers pulled me aside to let me know that I was to report to VocRehab that they had paid me for these two weeks so they could get the state check 'reimbursing them' for it. When I noted that they hadn't paid me yet, and we even hadn't met for two full work weeks either, he knew what I meant but how were they going to be able to pay me without first getting reimbursed for it? So I was told to let VocRehab know they had paid me for these first two weeks and then the brothers would pay me from the reimbursement check, afterwards.

I'd like to say it was this dishonesty which lead me to report them to VocRehab, but in reality it was the dress code and the insistence I lie to VocRehab was an extra reason to end 'the job'. I went home and wrote Cindy a detailed letter about my time with them and what they wanted me to do and dropped it off at the VocRehab office the following day as I walked to get my daily soda. She called me in and, though eying me suspiciously, thanked me for letting her know and told me I didn't need to continue with DAS. She had instead decided to find me a job in data entry and then I could work my way up from there. When I noted the problems I had using my fingers on small repetitive tasks, she was sure it wouldn't be a problem and gave me an appointment with a data entry firm to have me evaluated. When I arrived there the next week, they had me do a half hour 'sample run' which their computer would use to give them my data entry skill level. Once done, they found that I had a surprisingly low error rate, but I only entered in half the minimum data they would need in the testing time frame to consider me for a job. Sorry. I was sent back to the VocRehab office to show Cindy my results sheet.

Cindy didn't know what else she could do for me and I again offered the idea of me completing College then I'd have a degree that would get me into the many computer jobs available in town. She didn't think that was a good idea and placed me on hold and would keep me in mind when the next job prospects came up. I was sent home and didn't hear back from her for four months... At least they were issuing me free monthly bus passes in the meantime!

Then she called me sounding very excited. I was given a date & time and arrived at their equivalent of a cattle call where we were all clients that VocRehab was 'helping to find a job' and we were brought to a large conference room and told to take a seat. There we were introduced to a bespectacled man who told us he was forming a business with his partner who we may have heard of, Frederic Neal also known as 'Curly', recently retired from the Harlem Globetrotters. He was co-founding a business with this new man and they needed to hire people fast. And they wanted us! When asked, he explained that 'Curly' was a very busy man and couldn't be here himself to talk to us, but he truly was a partner in this new business and we'd meet him in a month after we signed on. One of us here for the presentation stood up and told us that she had heard of this guy and he was a fraud with whom Frederic Neal had publicly disavowed any business relationship. She picked up her things and left the room, the rest of us looked to the VocRehab counselors standing by the walls. They seemed momentarily rattled, but Cindy vouched for him and so the man was allowed to continue his sales pitch. Once he was done and asked for who wanted to sign on, the counselors were very insistent that we all do. So I gave my name as did most everyone else and he then decided to pick about fifteen from the pile of names. Cindy intervened and thought it'd be better if I joined later and so he said he'd get back to the rest of us and bring us into the business once it was established.

A month later I saw Cindy again and heard that the guy turned out not to have any connection with Frederic 'Curly' Neal and after having the fifteen clients sit in an apartment with next to nothing to do for two weeks, he had pressured them all into reporting that he had paid them for those two weeks so he could get the reimbursement for them and then, he told them, he would pay them after the fact. Most of them did as they were told and VocRehab cut him a check and when they returned for the third week, they found the apartment was now vacant and available to rent. The people who had fallen for his request to falsely state 'he had already paid them' were kicked out of the program for lying. Wasn't it good that I hadn't fallen for that? Cindy said after she told me this story. I agreed it was, but kept to myself my opinion that VocRehab seemed to be, at least, partially at fault as well.

The state seemed to agree after this and many other incidents and changed the rules so VocRehab would have to be shown a paycheck stub from the business itself, so the client was no longer on the hook and the 'business' would have to explicitly commit fraud rather than coerce the clients into doing it for them.

Raring to go back to work after my health was restored, by going through the state's Vocational Rehabilitation Services, I would spend the year job free without getting a step closer to my goals...

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The Simple Answer Is...

87

There is no simple answer. What had caused my weight loss? And why did antibiotics help it while I was taking them but I would begin to decline when they were stopped? I would like to say it was 'X' caused by 'Y', but the reality is all I have is a fist full of theories based on guesses. Before the doctor who helped me, Betsey, left the state, here's the theory we came up with...

When I had walking pneumonia in the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was treated with a strong course of antibiotics. Now we know that when antibiotics are taken, they often damage the balance of intestinal flora that we all have. By 'flora' I mean the community of bacteria that live in our guts and help keep 'bad' bacteria from taking hold while helping us to digest and absorb the food that we eat. So as I experienced my first strange health symptoms in the Summer of that same year, the guess is that the course of antibiotics for my walking pneumonia had caused an imbalance with those little bacteria in my intestines. This resulted in issues impacting which nutrients I could absorb as the years continued.

Of this imbalance, I had likely become allergic to a strain of 'normal' intestinal bacteria that we otherwise all have. I say this based on the fact that what I had, and caused me so much trouble, didn't seem to spread to those around me. Otherwise many of my friends would have been suffering from unexplained weight loss as well and bathroom bouts. As it was only me, then the reason it affected me and not my friends was because there was something unique to me involved in the problem. Given my now known catalog of allergies and intolerances to other common things in peoples' lives, it seems most likely in retrospect that I had become allergic to one or more strains of benign intestinal flora.

Next, this strain I was allergic to loved simple sugars such as fructose, in the most common form of corn syrup, as when I had them I would have a worse reaction in my gut. Is it possible that when I drank a corn syrup soda within a few hours the bacteria I was allergic too soaked it up and multiplied in my intestines to the point that it was plentiful enough for me to have that allergic reaction to it? The first symptoms of it being an escalating blood pressure and a sudden headache? And when the level of that bacteria had grown too large for my body to handle, it would flush it out through those painful bathroom bouts? One thing I can confirm here is that, while on the antibiotics, I could eat all the fructose and corn syrup I wanted to without ill effect. So much so that I became a huge pie fan during the early nineteen nineties!

Yet, once I knew I needed to avoid corn syrup and other sources of fructose such as fruit in the late nineteen eighties, why was I still having bathroom bouts? As it turns out, even table sugar has some fructose in it, though it is mostly sucrose a more complex sugar that many if not most bacteria can't use. So over the course of a few days, the bacteria I was allergic to would still get a small bit of fructose and slowly grow until three or four days later there was enough in my gut to cause the allergic reaction and result in another one of my prolonged bathroom bouts. Further, while I had been avoiding food with corn syrup as one of its main ingredients, I hadn't realized that it could still be in processed foods as its tenth or fiftieth additive. Once my full brain power returned, I realized this and made sure to avoid even these minor amounts of corn syrup laced food less they feed my intestinal problems.

With this theory of 'an intestinal bacteria I was allergic to', it nicely explains why the initial dose of oral antibiotics I had gotten from the joint doctor seemed to help, while the injection of penicillin didn't. But then, why hadn't the two courses of oral antibiotics I had received from the emergency room in the first few months of Nineteen Eighty-Nine not helped me? Had they been of too low a dose to effect the flora I was allergic too? Or had they been prescribed for too short a period to effect it? Or had I actually felt a little bit better at the time, but assumed it was just a periodic fluctuation in my condition that soon dissipated once those few days of antibiotics were finished? I did experience that switching me from Cephalexin for one month to Anaprox had reduced my improvement for that month. Could it simply be a case of the Cephalexin worked against the particular strain of bacteria I was having the bad reaction to while the Anaprox had less of an impact on it? Could it also have been a case that the two short batches of antibiotics I had gotten in early Nineteen Eighty-Nine had also been of a type that didn't affect the bacteria?

It would have been nice to have had these questions answered so I could then spend the rest of my days letting medical professionals know I was allergic to flora 'X' and thus needed to make sure I kept it out of my gut. Instead I'm stuck with the story of how, after years of weight loss and suffering, taking a long course of antibiotics cured it. What was it? They'd ask. I dunno, the but theory is...

Now in this era, there is scientific evidence that an imbalance of intestinal flora between twins can cause one to lose weight & have intestinal problems while his or her sibling is doing fine on the same diet. Further, doctors now know to have their patients take a course of probiotics after a course of heavy oral antibiotics to insure their intestinal tract is quickly restored to an appropriate balance of flora.

In the past, it was easier for doctors to label someone as mentally ill rather than face the possibility that there was a medical condition that they didn't understand or know how to treat. Remember when impotence was a psychological problem? Not any more. Remember when stomach ulcers were a physical manifestation of too much psychological stress in someone's life? Now we know ulcers are caused by harmful bacteria and sometimes too much of a type of medication. But back then these conditions were simply labeled a 'psychological condition' and those patients discarded by the medical profession because those doctors didn't want to admit they hadn't a clue.

Actually, perhaps that tactic is still in use today...

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