A Dangerous Woman

One of my favorite actors died the other day. Maggie Smith continued to amaze all of us with her sincere representation of characters into her old age. My nephew made a comment on FaceBook the next day about how he wished that dear Maggie could have lived forever.

I felt the same way, and wanted to respond, so I urged everyone to watch one of my favorite movies of hers, Tea With Mussolini.

Within a couple of minutes, I looked at my phone, and FaceBook messaged me that my comment had been deleted. When I looked further into the reason why, it said, that I appeared to be a dangerous person. If I continued to write inflammatory comments, I would be discontinued from FaceBook. (!)

"It must have been the "M" word", I told Doug. "That's ridiculous! They're infringing on your free speech!", he cried out.

"It was probably AI", I said. "I guess the robots are trained to spot people that talk about fascism. I wonder what would happen if I mentioned Hitler? Hmm. I'd better not try."

Friends on FB commented, "I always knew there was more to you than you let on!", and "LOL, we're going to have to keep an eye on you!"

On another note, at the end of the month, I went on to the USPS website to arrange to have our mail forwarded to Palm Springs. We've had a PO Box at Tahoe for over 11 years, but since the altitude affected Doug so severely this year, we had to get out of town rather suddenly. We forwarded our mail to Capitola, since we figured we would be there for at least 2 months, since it's at sea level, and, well, it's a beautiful place.

The next day I got a notice from the post office on email demanding that we both come in to the Capitola office to present our ID's to make sure that we were really who we claim to be . On Monday, we did just that, but Doug felt too weak to walk in. The person at the counter insisted that he needed to appear, but finally decided that he remembered us from the previous month, and took away that demand. "Thank you!, I said, "Oh, and I have one more request."

"And what would that be? he groaned, as the line behind me grew. "Well, it turns out that we won't actually be arriving in Palm Springs until November, since we'll be traveling, so I'd like to have it held for us there."

"Oh No, No, No! You can't keep doing this!" he cried. "You'll have to call the Palm Springs office to tell them your plan, and if you keep up all this moving around, they're really going to wonder who you are, and call you in again!"

"But I told you, the reason we left Tahoe was for sudden health reasons. We won't be keeping this up." I don't know if he thinks we are drug dealers or scammers, or Bonnie and Clyde. Hmm. I really am proving myself to become a dangerous woman.

I told all of this to Doug, and he started thinking that it was kind of exciting to be married to such a risky person. He never realized it before.

It turns out that when I did call the PS post office, I got a very nice person, who said that they would gladly save our mail for 30 days, plus an extra 10, if I chose to pick it up myself.

"That's perfect!" I said "We would like to make sure that we're able to receive our ballots, since we're both registered there".

"That's what we're hearing from a lot of folks this year!" she said. "It seems like more of you 'snowbirds' are arriving a little later, probably because of the heat!"

" I know! I'm hoping for about 82 degrees by the time we get there. That's my favorite!" (I don't think I sounded so threatening just then....)

When I think about it though, perhaps I should work on a more edgy persona. My hair was cut last week, a great deal shorter than I wanted, and I mentioned that maybe I should dye it purple and make it spiky. People got all excited and encouraged me to go for it. I don't think so. Guess I'm not so dangerous afterall.