Yes, They Are Watching Us....Infecting Us..Wherever We Go

        A friend and I had this discussion while skinny dipping up in the Caribou Wilderness a few years back..."We think they are mosquitoes, what if some of them are drones...tiny drones?" This sounds a bit like paranoia, but in this 'day and age', who can blame you? A virus spreading through our civilization is much more common than we like to admit. It was inevitable...we are all facing infection and we are all being snooped on.
        I enjoy my time on the internet. I have so many questions about the world around me...type in your questions and slowly, you are revealing (to the keepers of information) your soul. Humans exposing their souls. Machines collecting this information and putting it to use. Bugs invading every secret hideout, some of them natural, many of them developed for private gain.
        As my friend says, "There is nothing we can do about this." Except for....find a refreshing small lake in a wilderness nearby for secret swims and do not carry your smart phone with you. We dismissed the 'mosquito drone' worry immediately by laughing it off and reapplying the Deet. Being kept track-of is a more serious and pervasive conundrum. We are being watched nearly everywhere we go...satellites could spot us as we plunge into our secret lakes. So often, we volunteer our warm bodies for information gathering, nearly every waking moment of our days.
        I have imagined how I would drop-out of society, a plan of escape, if it all became too much for me to handle. It's not bullet-proof, especially if I mention it here. It involves bug-out supplies in my go-bag and a bicycle. I would stay on the move along the backroads of society...the unpaved roads...and hope they would accept my debit card when I get hungry.

Please Melania, Vanquish Bullying

        I witnessed bullying, rather extreme bullying when I was in Junior High School...by a "fireplug" of a kid, who was my age but one year behind in school. Unknowingly, I sat next to his girlfriend in Study Hall. She asked me what I thought of 'RK' one day while we were supposed to be studying. He's a prick, was my answer. I told her that I witnessed him picking on a "special needs" kid in gym class and I was sorry I didn't step in and stop him. That was the end of our conversation...we went back to studying.
        The very next day, 'RK' challenged me to an after-school fight...sure enough, events unfolded quickly and two days later we were squaring off on the school football field. 'RK' was stocky. a wanna-be football team running back. I was taller but "lanky"and had no interest in making the Northern Huskies football team.
       Most in attendance, yes, we had spectators, I was sure, were betting on 'RK'. He didn't have the grades to make the football team and he knew it. He was angry and his brother had just shipped off to Vietnam...  (I found out later.)
       "No weapons, just fists." My step-father watched from his Studebaker pick-up truck. We exchanged a couple of loud and impressive blows to the face, mostly the foreheads. I moved in quickly and put him in a headlock, which I was determined to maintain..I pushed his face down in the dirt a few times. Surprisingly, he said, "That's it, I'm done." Which surprised me to no end...I let go and sure enough, he stood up and walked away. He seemed to be sobbing as I watched him walk under the goalposts.
       We didn't finish our last four years of school as friends but, we did talk a few times, no hard feelings. I had a few extra 'friends' after that and I was never called into the office for an explanation or discipline. It turned out that I wasn't the only one who'd witnessed him bullying "the slow kid".  Mr. Warner, our P.E. teacher watched a couple of these bullying incidents and he hadn't done anything about it either. He told me a couple of years later while our class was immersed in a "boxing unit", "I've seen you box, you tagged 'RK' pretty good back in ninth grade." Really? I had no idea that there was a teacher watching our skirmish. I hated bullys then and I detest bullys and bullying now. I'm rooting for you Melania.