Happy birthday to Heather and the Captain

The 26th day of the month seems to have taken an almost mythological significance lately, from the start of the near end of my marriage on this same day in December, to the near end of my employment with my company I work for about 14 year ago due to my obsessive and neurotic interest in a female I used to work with in San Diego. Now some of you might look at me as that creepy stalker type who would end up trying to assasinate someone, but I try to instead see myself as a shy and introspective type who never really related to well to the females he was interested in for most of his life.

Heather was a flirty, good looking part time worker going to San Diego State, and in retrospect, definitely had a few issues of her own, and her innocent flirting with me planted a seed in my mind that slowly but surely grew into a monstrous creation of its own. I look back and see it was an opportunity for me to get in contact with that vast underwold of my psyche known as the unconscious - but the downfall of this interaction was putting a few thoughts of this experience in writing and dropping it off in the mail to her. She had provided me with her address as we were involved in the "picnic committee" which met at her apartment once, and being too shy to actually ask her out (I did get her a special Calvin and Hobbes T-shirt for her birthday on this date 14 years ago) - I decided a Doestoevsky style letter baring my soul to her would go over better. On a therapeutic level, it worked - but the only problem was she turned it over to her supervisor, and next thing you know, the big shots of the company were plotting ways to drag me off to the nearest mental hospital.

My supervisor at the time may have been a screaming psychopath from hell - but I will give him this - his intervention and sticking up for my character probably was the reason I held onto my job. I had a very tense and embarrasing meeting with my manager and him, was sent off to therapy, she left the company and they had some type of settlement with her (everyone was terrified of "sexual harrassment" - although I don't think it really fell into that category) - and although I ended up having to pay for the therapy myself, somehow I held my job and now it is nothing but a somewhat remote memory. I am married and know better than to ever want to get involved with anyone at work any more, and now I look back at it as a somewhat troubling but essential aspect of my growth.

As for the Captain (his name is Kirk - one of my best friends and my Grateful Dead concert partner of many years) - he ironically was born on the same day - 12 years earlier - which has some kind of astrological significance - and he has a strange but definite resemblance to her on top of that.

Memory lane...