Mists

Well, Penny has vanished into the mists of McPeople. Her choice. I sent her a short note this afternoon asking if she'd thought about some things she and I had talked about in IM last week. She basically said that she was accepting the idea that it's not "normal" for her to be friends with me, mostly because this new guy thinks it's not normal.

That's one sure way to set me off. I have never really given a fuck what 'the world' does, because the world has done a lot more things TO me than FOR me, and basically everything worthwhile I've gotten to in my life has been done in spite of what 'the world' and its conventional wisdom held.

My guess is, that's been true in your life, too.

She had a real chance to get out of the small town in her head, even if she never does decide to get out of the small town in which she's lived all her life. She could have learned new things, been challenged by someone who wanted to make her better, more capable, more self-reliant. She could have left 'the world' behind and made her own.

She didn't have it in her.

I was wrong. That disappoints and saddens me, and I told her so. I told her basically, look, don't talk to me again until you're prepared to not be a sheep. Her response was basically, "well, I guess you don't know me as well as you think."

No, but what I'm seeing now, I don't want to know. I asked that she not contact me again. Then I removed her from my phone, my IM lists, and my PDA. In effect, she has disappeared into the mists of the great masses of sheep, and I likely will not see her again. When her eventual disappointment with this McGuy she's now semi-engaged to bubbles up to where she can't stand it, a process that I am quite certain will happen, she will almost certainly be too headstrong to contact me and say, "I've decided not to be a sheep any more."

If she did that, I'd be OK with it. But she won't, so I won't think about it.