Sunshine / Annie Glenn / Zipless

Starting tomorrow it is supposed to be sunny for a week so I’ll be able to get out for some walking and that is going to be good for my cabin fever. It started raining at the beginning of September and its been raining ever since. I am really looking forward to some outdoor time no matter how cold it is. I have an excellent down jacket.

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Wow! I just read about Annie Glenn, wife of John Glenn who passed away this week. Who knew?

Who knew that she stuttered trying to say 85% of her words. The more famous he got, the more reclusive she became. Reading about how her stutter affected her moved me, partly of course, due to my identification with her problem.

In 1973 she heard about a residential program for people with a stutter and she enrolled. At age 53, she was cured and she went on to become a professor with the Speech Pathology Department at Ohio State University.

More impressive than that was to read about how she became involved in Mr. Glenn’s Senate campaigns. She spoke on his behalf and afterwards singled out the silent people for contact. She focused on the disabled due to her experience.

Annie and John Glenn met as toddlers. She has basically known him her whole life and now the poor and accomplished woman is alone. But she has an incredible legacy of which to be incredibly proud.

(Yesterday was the official eight-month anniversary of having a pretty bad stutter.)

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There are five Zip car spaces in the lot beneath my window. Often two cars park in three of the spaces so there are frequently eight cars below me and the drivers who use them cause the car alarms to go off several times a day so I called the company.

An extremely courteous woman took my call and said someone local would be in touch. Here is what that local person wrote:

“Thank you for calling our call center about our fleet. We have investigated the issue, and our records show that none of our cars in that area have alarms setting off. We also only have two vehicles near there at the moment. Is this possibly another car share program that you are referring to? I will do everything I can to ensure our cars are not disturbing you, but I don’t think our cars are the issue in this instance. Please let me know if there are any other issues.”

I was grossly offended to be, essentially, called a liar so, for the first time in my life I did not take the high road in my response. I included a photo of all the cars; and it felt good to be as uncaring and cold back. The view is better from the high road, but for once in my life I took the feel good route.

I am fed up with the kind of treatment I got from a person who chose not to think, not to recognize that there was a soul on the receiving end of her missive — she just wanted to get another thing checked off her “to do” list. Her response only served her.