Impressions of Life

Did you miss my post from last week? You can read about my First Recollection here.

That first recollection was frightening for me. I was only a little girl at the time and had yet to figure out completely the difference between the real world and the dream world. I can remember waking up and not being able to open my eyes until I yelled out for my mom and heard her voice.

Second Recollection
Everyone, include me, thought that what had happened with Christine was a one-time occurrence. Christine and her family moved away the winter after that summer nightmare and I let the event slip into the files of my subconscious.

I did not have a dream that felt so real again until I was twelve years old. Unlike my dream as a little girl, the one I had when entering puberty was common, not being good or bad, just an event. In the dream, I was walking to my friend’s house to get her for the stride we would take the rest of the way to school. I was wearing a brown jumper with a white blouse, knee-highs to match, and carrying my bundle of schoolbooks. The day was pleasant enough, just a little breezy, and the sun was shining. As I turned to walk down my friend’s street, I am briefly entranced by the flowerbed in the front yard of the house on the corner. Nevertheless, I keep on walking. Because of the preoccupancy I was going through for just a minute or two, I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. I did not fall but my books got scattered as I stopped myself from tumbling to the ground.

Like I said, it was not a good or bad dream. It just was there. I know, it does not sound like anything at all. That morning I got dressed for school in my brown jumper and white blouse and put the matching knee-highs on before picking up my slue of books. Sounds a little familiar, déjà vu. I took note of it but quickly put it aside. I had to walk a mile and a half to school so I did not have time to ponder on anything silly. However, as I turned to walk down my friend’s street, I felt the déjà vu again as I looked at the flowerbed in the front yard of the house on the corner. Seeing that I had already dreamed this, I quickly told myself to watch where I was walking. The only problem was that I did not do it soon enough. I stumbled over the crack and my books took flight.

What did I do then? The normal thing, picked up my books and kept on walking. Of course, now I had rosy red cheeks from being embarrassed. The rest of the day went well.

From the Crossville Chronicle

Pair charged with filing false drug theft reports
By Michael R. Moser Editor
CROSSVILLE — In the wake of a rash of reports of medicine being stolen, Crossville Police have arrested two local women and charged them with filing false reports, according to arrest documents.

Melissa Williams Walls, 40, 10 Green Meadows, and Tina L. Glover, 43, 731 N. Webb Ave., were charged in separate incidents, according to Det. Brian Eckelson’s reports.

Glover is accused of reporting to police on March 26 that someone stole 90 oxycodone from her purse at her residence. She also claimed she was physically assaulted and the pills pried from her hands in a strong-armed robbery by a man she admitted to previously giving pills to.

When a bottle of pills matching those she reported missing were found in her possession, Glover allegedly told police the pills had been borrowed from a friend that she would not name.

Police recovered other evidence and when asked, Glover declined to submit to a polygraph test.

Wall is accused of reporting to police on April 1 that someone stole 149 oxycodone pills from her purse at her residence less than three hours after she filled the prescription. She later claimed that 249 pills were taken, but a check with the pharmacy revealed that she had only picked up the pills 45 minutes prior to reporting them stolen.

City police consulted with the District Attorney’s Office before filing charges against the two women.

Law enforcement agencies have been plagued with a large number of reports of prescription medicine being stolen. TennCare and some physicians require police reports before issuing refills on drugs that are reported stolen.

Police are investigating other reports of drugs being stolen.

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People are falsely reporting theft all over the United States. It happens when someone want the insurance money or wants revenge.  Unfortunately, it also happens when an addict is trying to get more of what he or she thinks is needed.

My mother-in-law has lived in this area for almost thirty years. She has never been one to stick her head in the sand. She likes things being kept clean and simple. She had never mentioned or even hinted about there being a drug problem in this town. That is not to say that it never happened at all but nothing very deviant was ever cooked up.

Then I read an article like this one. Poor Crossville has hit the big times.

I had to look up the word “oxycodone” to understand the magnitude of this crime. It is a pain reducer similar to morphine. These two women obviously wanted to re-supply their habit. What is so sad is that these women had convinced themselves that what they were doing was not a crime. After all, no one was breaking into a store or residence. It was being done in broad daylight with the police being involved. They were reporting a crime, not engaging in one, right?

Of course, they are wrong and probably know it if they would stop and think for half a minute. I am shocked by the physicians of this community. Yes, some do take extra measures to prevent this sort of thing, but should not there be some regulations about preventive guidelines being in place and being strictly followed?

[In case you are curious, TennCare is Tennessee’s label for Medicaid.]

If I recall correctly, I realized that I began to love writing when I was in my early teens. It seemed that someone was always interrupting me when I spoke or was telling me to shush. I do not think anyone meant any harm by doing this, but, for a young teenager, this is the same as telling that person that what he or she has to contribute is not worth a damn. I found that I could “talk” as much as I wanted to about whatever I wanted to by writing it down. No one was interrupting me or tell me to hush because I was quietly writing in my bedroom alone.

Back then people used typewriters instead of keyboards. The only computers most of us saw were on the TV show, Star Trek. Those were not even real ones. They were cardboard prompts for the set. I only used the typewriter for assignments for school. The rest of the time, I used a spiral notebook, filling up the pages with poems and prose.

Even when I finally started using a computer, it was at work; and for me, its only function was to make my work more efficient. I still could not think of the computer as something to use for casual or personal use. I kept on writing longhand in my spiral notebooks.

Since then, I have had my own personal computer. In fact I have had a few of them. I started out with the ‘98, moved up to the Millennium [which was a big mistake], and on up to the XP. Being on the Internet has shown me so much that I would have missed otherwise. The liberal art world is elusive to say the least and unless you are right in the middle of it with your own brand of art, you do not feel that you really fit in to their zone.

I started my web exploration with the major I had in college, Social Work. I found information, classes, and forums dealing with this subject. I quickly learned that there are an awful lot of people out there who were claiming to know about this field, and yet, they did not know the terms used in this line of work that I had learned. Wake up and smell the coffee! Did I really think that people would be totally honest in this virtual mall of everything? I guess I wanted this new world to be honest and true but knew down in my gut that this was a fairy tale.

One day about six months after getting the ‘98 PC, I discovered web graphics. I found, within this community, that people really could not lie about what they knew or what they did not know. Your level of talent was there, right on the screen. I felt much more at ease with these people. I learned quite a bit from many of them and was even able to teach some others what I had learned. It was a great way to spend my leisure time at home. I did this for many years, not giving any thought to the first craft I fallen in love with way back when I was a kid. [And writing is a liberal art, in case you were wondering how it ties into the rest of this post.]

It was not until I started reading novels nonstop again, when I began to ponder over the idea of writing again. The so-called real world was not being very congenial, making it impossible for a middle-aged disabled woman to find even a part-time job. Friends and family had been telling me for years that I had a flare for writing. I would not have to deal so much with the “real” world if I took up the craft again. After all, writing is an individual activity.

I went on-line to see what I could find on this enormously large topic. There were writing groups, write-for-pay sites, colleges, and authentic authors who have physical books published as well as the normal information stuff. This idea came to me just as blogging was becoming all the rage. I found blogging communities filled with novelists and journalists. All of them will to help anyone who was serious about learning in the field of writing. I started writing articles for writing sites, getting feedback that had some good constructive criticism in it.

I have finally mustered up the courage to try to write a fictional story, maybe even a novella [short novel]. I do not think this would have happened if I had not met so many writers who have been willing to give their all to novices in the field. Moreover, that would not have happened if it were not for me meeting these wonderful people from all over the world on the Internet.

This is my new Tuesday event for my blog, Escapades in Speculative Reality. Because of the unusual schedule Hubby and I have right now, it will not be published until Tuesday evening. Anyone living in Europe, Asia, or Down Under will not see it until Wednesday morning at the earliest. I hope you enjoy this event and will grace my pages with your presence to read about my antics in this perception of my world.

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What was once labeled as science fiction is often found in the real world decades later. Things that we take for granted these days would have been fantasy a century ago. Yes, you have heard this all before. Right? I could rehash the inventions like the airplane, the hybrid-car, and the computer. I would rather discuss the more intangible aspects that have weaved in and out of real life through the ages.

Because so much of what was once called science fiction has become reality, the term has been put into a larger category, Speculative Fiction. This has given way to stories that have bits and pieces of reality sprinkled throughout the story and, sometimes, will have you speculating on just how far fetched the story really is. Those of us who have an active imagination can see all sorts of possibilities within our own world here on Earth. We are not limited to what has been proven or has been written about or discussed before. By stepping one foot beyond the normal, we see things from a perspective the others often miss. I prefer to call it Speculative Reality.

First Recollection
It all started when I was about six years old. I had a friend who lived two doors up from me. Christine was not my best friend but nevertheless, she was a friend that I spent time with on occasion. Christine had Diabetes 1 and had to take insulin before each meal. If I went over there before lunchtime to play, Christine’s mom would call her in at about 11:30. As I would walk past the side of her house, I often heard her scream in pain. It was the insulin shot. More often than not, when I would go to sleep that night, I would dream about playing with Christine. It always ended the same way. Christine would go inside and I would hear her scream. At that point in my dream, I would become blind and somehow make it home where I would cry. My mom always called these sympathy dreams.

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Will have more next Tuesday.