Parsing the Scam

During the scam incident, the conversation involved a lot of numbers. Yes, those ones: the one’s I should not have shared. It was brutal for me; numbers are impossibly difficult for me to say. However, from the experience, I discovered something very, very odd—and interesting: I can’t say numbers, but I can say all numbers divisible by five. Go figure.

I’m the sole member of our dog walking group who is almost always on the walk, three times a week. It was different when Her Highness had foot problems, but now that she’s on prednisone, she only very rarely can’t go on the walk. Regina is the next most regular. She comes twice a week. It’s not uncommon now for a group walk to consist of me and one or two other people.

I haven’t yet shed my obsession about being scammed. I haven’t read the bible. Religions are cults. I have no desire to be in one. But, of course, I’ve been exposed to biblical stories because I studied English Lit. I believe it is full of crime, war and unethical behavior. The history of man is the history of conflict, both state and individual … and crime.

When pondering some issue in my mind, I often think about something as being one point in a continuum. It’s the ying yang thing. For there to be ethical people, there will be unethical/immoral ones. Every one of us is a point on the continuum between these two extremes.

I’m powerfully moral and ethical. I’m not bragging; it wasn’t a conscious decision I made. Here’s my theory as to why: I was deeply invested in Catholicism as a child. Jesus was my hero. I inherited the church from Françoise, my birth mother, who gave me to the church.

I went to church—in fucking Latin—every Sunday. It was torture. I was bored to tears. But then I was invited into the choir. I loved church after that. I loved singing. I loved being at the back of the church singing to people’s backs. I loved the harmonies we imbued in every hymn. I went to cub scouts at the church, and I went to Catechism classes on Wednesdays after school.

The Tyrells introduced me to their families. Some of them were nice people, but they were not relatives to me. The Tyrells never mentioned my adoption. They never asked me if I was curious about who I was. But then, they never talked to me about anything. Besides church, I wanted to be in our local band. But not for the music, for the uniform. I wanted to be seen as belonging.

The church was compelling for me because it gave me access to people who liked me and welcomed me, and it gave me a sense of having a history. I was active in the church drama group and a soloist in the choir. More importantly, the stories of the bible and the commandments took root in my soul. All through school, the back of my ruler had the golden rule written on it: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The golden rule made sense to me. Having no parental involvement and no siblings, I wanted to be a person who could earn friendships.

As I said, becoming proudly ethical, wasn’t a decision I made. It is a consequence of my life experience. When I left the church, I didn’t give up the values it taught me. Am I bragging? No. I’m merely positioning myself on the ethical/non-ethical continuum. And why am I talking about this? Because it’s the best way I know to explain why I feel that society is rotting. I’m glad I’m old and getting out before it gets really nasty.

We are a flawed species. Ergo, I get scammed.