@plainoldme,
plainoldme wrote:The mother called me and ranted on at length. She was a social climber. Other than making a "pest" of themselves, I think it was engaging in commerce, but, the incidence was more than 20 years ago. I decided it was better to say nothing to the woman. My daughter was hurt by the event.
Your daughter had the opportunity to learn that a significant
(vocal) proportion of the populace is in varying states of ill-health.
Years ago, it fell to me to process the mail of the Governor of NY.
Every day, reliably, it was the same thing:
most of it was perfectly conservative, e.g. addressing the budget,
or supporting one bill or opposing another, as u 'd expect to find.
To the left of that group, some of it was a tinge more emotional;
very long letters expressing their, or their relatives', tales of woe
(ofen requesting to be sprung from prison).
To the left of that group, were a significant proportion of letters
alleging that agents, or mysterious strangers, or enemies
were watching them or following them and spying on their
fone calls n mail because of their special knowledge or abilities.
To the left of that group, were legibly written letters whose syntax
and substantive concepts were so badly scrambled that I was unable
to discern what thay wanted the Governor to
DO, or to restrain himself from doing.
(I had to read it all, because if there were threats of violence,
we needed to forward the mail to the NYS Troopers.)
The moral of the story is:
a significant percentage of the population is in mental ill-health
of different varieties and of differing degrees of severity.
It helps to cope with the public to be aware of that.
David
