Psych(ot)ic Influence

So why was Allison obsessing over this O'Leary character? Who knows? My reasoning sounds conceited, but it makes a lot more sense than what follows. You see, when I met her, I was hung up over Juliet, which pissed her off (not bad, eh? meet a woman and piss her off in a week's time). Instead of dropping me like a wet blanket, she decides to be my friend and have her own corresponding long distance relationship. As long as I hung on, she kept doing it... and continued to elaborate the story.

It started to come out that Tom was psychokinetically enabled in that he was able to control his environment with his mind. This was all constructed in a series of building blocks so it all wouldn't come out at once, but little by little to build one item on top of another, from the very simple and even believable to the downright ridiculous.

I'll try my best to get all of this is the order it happened, but it's more to the point that I just get it all out. To begin with, Allison told a story of a former boyfriend she had that was cruel to her in some ways I prefer not to recount because of some of the things she said he did to her (quite against her will). This was just some common boy she knew, and while the tale was on the horrific side, it wasn't unbelievable.

That story was tailor made to anger even the sanest of men since anyone who attacks a woman should be made to suffer. But, of course, this one was long gone. In fact, she pointed out some model in a catalog and said that was him. My belief in the who began to falter, and it was afterward when I started to put all her stories together and realize just how convoluted it all was. It's like trying to make heads or tails out of Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street and all their sequels.

Let's put a time frame in perspective. She graduated high school in May 1994. I met her in January 1996. That's just shy of two years. During that time, she managed to have two long-ish relationships, live in Oklahoma City (pinpointed this to April 95, as she said the OKC bombing woke her up), and work for Playboy (this is what she told me). When I met her, you may recall, she was working for a hotel as a concierge, and it was a job she'd recently acquired. Is it possible to do all that in two years? Yeah. Is it likely? I don't recall the precise times now, but I knew them well enough then to question that every story was true. Were some true? Sure. Do I really know which ones or parts of ones were true? Nope.

In fact, one of my earlier excursions with her (and Hedy, of course) was to drive past her ex's apartment to see if he was there with his girlfriend. Yeah, she was stalking him for awhile. That stayed with me long enough to warn my groomsmen to make sure she didn't show up at my wedding.

Back to Tom. I would like to mention that Tom O'Leary is the victim of the delusions of a pathological liar, and in no way is any of this a reflection upon him. While the performance I saw actually used an understudy (according to the program), but I saw a clip of his performing, and he seemed quite good.

Walk with me into this fantasy, will you?

The first thing that came out was that Tom had a house in Crown Pointe in Tulsa, which is a big to-do housing addition here in Tulsa. This house had been renovated considerably to resemble the underground of the Paris Opera House to the point that one had to take a boat to cross a small lake inside the house. Why, oh why, would he do this? Well, because he more than just played the Phantom in the show -- no, he was related. You see, the extension to the Phantom story is that Erik, the Phantom -- whose real name was (big surprise) Thomas James O'Leary also -- did have children, but not with the mythical Christine, and Tom's ancestor was one of them.

The Phantom Thomas (who we'll continue to refer to as Erik to keep it straight) acheived his feats by way of psychokinesis, which is the ability to affect your environment with your mind. This isn't just moving stuff around. Here's some info outside of the fantasy. Skilled psychokinetics can do all kinds of stuff such as changing temperatures of items, affecting clouds, slowing their heart rate, and of course, moving items. Back to Tom...

The first thing that actually happened that attempted to prove this was an answering machine message. We got Tom leaving a message, but when Allison tried to play it back, it was gone. Gasp! He erased the message! I commented to her that all she had to do was not rewind the machine, or rewind it to before the message (this was the days of cassette tape answering machines) and play the blank space. She was, of course, deeply offended that I accused her of lying.

So you can see derailing the fantasy wasn't difficult. It was just a matter of whether I would choose to do so, and in retrospect, derailing it would get easier and easier as time went on. Actually, I could have derailed it very early on if I knew anything about cell phones and how they worked. You see, at the time, I didn't know that when you take a cell phone into a different area code that it kept its own number, and not take the area code of where ever it ended up. Allison continually changed up Tom's area code depending on which part of the country his cell phone was in. When I learned the facts behind this, it all started to come together for me.

So we have Tom, the descendant of Erik, the psychokinetic practitioner. What else could the master of mind do with his powers? How about possession? Am I serious? Hell, I really don't know, but it was one of those things that I barely believed, but was intrigued enough to with it. Shoot, it sure felt like I was talking to a different person sometimes. "Tom", while talking through Allison, indicated that he could take over her body from wherever he happened to be at the time to talk to me. After all, he was grateful she had a friend like me around. Sure, whatever.

What else could Tom do? How about some revenge? Remember the guy who did unspeakable things to Allison? Well, one thing to note is that I didn't hear about this character until after Tom came onto the scene, and it wasn't long till I heard she'd told Tom about him as well. This, naturally, made Tom quite upset.

A few days later, Allison got a call from this guy's mother (why she would call, God only knows, but that's what Allison said), and this guy had met with an untimely death while swimming in the ocean. Shortly thereafter, "Tom" popped in and revealed he'd basically astral projected himself to where this guy was and used his psychokinetic abilities to hold him underwater. While I can't say I would have agreed with someone doing what he did to Allison (no matter how warped she was), I don't think that would be the best solution.

What gets me was that all this stuff happened over the course of only about 5 months. She from a nice rebound to someone possessed by the mind of an actor. So what would possess me to hang on this long to someone that warped? There was the hope of one thing; that maybe, just maybe there was a thread of truth in what she was saying. That's all I wanted. Just one iota of truth, since in the beginning of the story, it was at least plausible that she went through some talent agency that was used by the Really Useful Group to fill out some bit parts in a touring production. It was plausible that while there, she charmed some guy who happened to play the lead part; she did have an infectious and outgoing attitude. If she charmed said guy, it was plausible that he would do whatever for her to woo her into his good graces, and he supposed proposed to her after a couple of months while at his home in New York.

So if all this was plausible, since he played the lead in one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most successful shows, it was also just as plausible that at some point, she would meet Lord Lloyd Webber himself. So went the story over the first couple of months, and if she'd done that, then could it not be said that she might mention that she had a friend who'd gone so far as to have not only purchased cast recordings for every show available but also purchase a biography of his? And who's to say that he and Tom might not be agreeable to meeting said friend on a future occasion, if all of this were true?

She played the one card she had to keep me hanging: the hope of meeting someone who could be considered a hero of mine. I admire a great many people, and it is those who meet with success in what they do. I could not hope for any of that success to rub off, but maybe, just maybe, knowing someone would lead to a glimmer of hope that they might read something I would write and give it a chance.

I believe that it was that more than anything else that kept me hanging on through the insanity, and it was entirely possible that she pulled the insane routine to try and get rid of me. She had a dreadful fear of commitment and anyone getting close to her, so after awhile, she likely went from the anger over Juliet routine to not wanting me to get close to her. It's hard to say, but the only reason someone would go so far as to appear completely off their nut (well, if they aren't) would be to get rid of someone who won't leave.

I should have left. After all, it can't get any crazier, could it? Yeah, it could, but fortunately, this charade didn't last long, and it quickly moved into a span of time in which I was able to be myself for awhile, and it was very nice...

These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

You gotta love people you work with. You see them about as much as you see your own family, but sometimes, they are about as bright as the people who call in for help. Being in a position as a helper of "internal customers," I ran into all kinds of weirdness that one would think these people should know. Not just talking about in-depth info, either. We're talking basic training.

For instance, I took a chance on offending someone with this question:

They said: "I changed the phone's serial number on the customer's account. I made a test call and it didn't work."
I said: "Did you program the phone?"
They said: "Oh, I have to do that."

Yeah, report to HR for a drug test.

Or how about this one. We had someone ask for help finding the international rate to call Albuquerque, New Mexico. We explained that New Mexico was within their calling area and included in the domestic long distance. After a pause, they asked again about what the rate would be since New Mexico is international. We had to recap that Mexico is international, but New Mexico is one of the 50 states, and hence, covered in the plan.

With a huff and puff, the person asked, then, so what part of New Mexico is not covered and what are the rates? We stated that all of New Mexico is covered. Finally, they either took it or just got upset, because they said, "ok, bye," and hung up.

Then there was this highly confusing conversation: This one person called and asked what this oblivious 24.95 charge on a bill was for. I looked at it and saw CLA for an abbreviation among the nonsense. I told her CLA stands for Cigarette Lighter Adapter. Sure, the lights came on, but she said, "Oh, I just answered my own question then!"

Um, how?

So maybe you've noticed that the answers from Help desk people aren't entirely trusted by those who actually call in. Nothing illustrates that better than by this little exile from his high school debate team...

I had a rep call in and ask me why we were charging the customer $121. He wanted to know if it had to do with termination fees, but I quickly determined it did not. He talked about payments the customer made, bills from March, April, May, June, and July, and other irrelevant stuff. I told him the balance was from the april bill and nothing else since everything after april was credited. Overage and Service charges; that's it.

It took another 25 minutes to explain that all the irrelevant stuff was still irrelevant and that the charges were legit and no termination fees were there, etc, etc, etc, and tht the payments would not apply to the april bill because the last payment was before that bill came out, etc, etc, etc, for 25 minutes...

Did he understand when we were done? When I told him ingore all other bills and all other charges and tell her it is for overage and service fees from April?

Maybe, because then he argued about it in the customer's favor. There was a shadow of doubt on the service fees because the number was ported to a different carrier (according to memos) at the beginning of that cycle...not that this topic had even been breached. I gave that to him.

Now charges are only overage from April. Overage and taxes. Real easy right? WRONG! We had to go over it again! And again! And again! 40 minutes after the call began, he was satisfied and went to the customer, miraculously still hanging on.

I just shook my head. I always went for nailing down the problem based on the most obvious information, and then if any further information is needed to explain THAT answer, then we dig. This does not mean the answer must involve extraneous stuff.

To round this out, I'll throw in something that doesn't involve a call in, but cleaning people. You know, those people who always clean the bathroom at 12 and 5? Well, this involves cups, and it started kind of suddenly one month.

We'd gone through quite a few cleaning people, and the one batch did something I really wasn't expecting. I always kept a 32 oz. cup on my desk that I continued refilling with ice water as the night wears on. One day I came in to find it missing. I'm thinking, "who in the world would steal a cup?"

Well, I learned that the cleaning people had (without warning) begun bussing our desks and removing cups that appear disposable. I actually had one on my desk one night, and it was gone the following day. I was wondering, where in their job description it includes bussing cups off of desks?

They cost me 75 cents...

Cat Woman

You know, sometimes when you hear a story, it's way too good to pass up. Usually it's because it sounds so unbelievable that it simply can't be real, but you are assured that it is. I'll have to keep the source on this one anonymous since I want to make sure no one is unduly humiliated (not that I give away a great deal of names anyway, right?).

I grew up with cats -- lots of cats. But despite having an upwards of sixteen cats at one time, it never possessed me to personify them a great deal. Sure, I talked to them, but it was obviously a one sided conversation unless they reacted in some clear way. This is normal, and one way, I don't mind being normal. After all, animals are living creatures, and talking to them enough might actually induce some kind of understanding between you and them. But that's where you end it. You don't go to "the next level."

What is this "next level," you ask? Well, hold on to your seat.

There is a woman out there who had two daughters and a husband and lived out of town on some farmland. As time wore on, her daughters grew up, got married, and moved out of the house, leaving the woman and her husband alone to live out their days in the silence of the country. The husband worked, as most do, so he is gone during the days, leaving her by herself completely.

Her daughters urged her to get a job so she can get out of the house and earn a little money. Well, she refused stating that she was afraid to drive since (because they live in the country) she was afraid she'd hit a deer. So she had another idea: she'll raise cats and sell them. This went on for a couple years, and apparently, she made some decent money doing it...but she got attached to the cats, so she had to stop.

Well, she decided to move from raising cats...to raising chickens. This went on for a year or two, but again, she had to stop, because...yeah, she got attached to the chickens. So now she is in a house with the occasional husband, the leftover cats, and the leftover chickens. What's a woman to do?

Obviously, conversing with the cats isn't totally out of the question, but what do you do when Puss doesn't respond? Well, clearly, you assign a voice to Puss and answer for him. This way, you are talking, and Puss is responding in a different voice, so now, you can converse with someone. But oh wait, Boots is out of the loop. Boots gets his voice, too, and now you can have a three way conversation over the dish-washing. That works.

But what happens when Boots gets attitude and starts calling you fat? And Puss has been sleeping around with more than one of the other cats in the house, so clearly she's a slut. And now, the chickens want to get in on the conversation, so they (naturally) get their own voices and let's not leave out the other cats as well.

After a short while, now the cats and chickens all have their very own voices, first and last names, and complete family histories. Conversations are flying all over the place with everyone trying to talk over each other (though curiously, no one manages to talk over anyone).

So one day, Nixon decides he's gonna get a little lip with the master and he and the woman launch into this hellacious argument. Names are tossed back and forth. Nixon calls her fat and ugly. She knows he's a whore with his manhood and has been overeating lately. It's too much, and word comes back to the others that Nixon has left, going into the field behind the house. He doesn't return.

Several days later, a cat's body was discovered in that field...decapitated. Poor thing must have committed suicide.

One thing you would never do to the cat woman is suggest that the cats are not talking to her. This would, of course, be foolishness, since since she (and you) is clearly hearing their voices, they simply must be talking. If she sits in her chair and starts in with a thousand mile stare, let her go. The conversations will start, and the cats and chickens will start talking. Just let it go.

I hear that if you were to have the honor of staying over at her house, and you wake up and you're alone with her...pretend to be asleep. Apparently, the occasion has arisen that you've had a conversation with the cat woman and it didn't go so well.

It would suck, after all, to wake up in the field and discover you'd lost your head.