Wednesday, March 30, 2005

I spoke with my aunt on the phone earlier this evening. She told me an anecdote about buying a nice pork roast at the store and then accidentally signing the charge slip "Pork Roast" because she was thinking about cooking it (which has become her new online identity now that she has a hookup --"Hello, Pork Roast").

Now, I have been known to write or say a completely different word like that from time to time, so I offered her the example that whenever I am thinking or saying the word "wallet", I always think of the word "walnut". And sometimes say it.

At this point, she burst out laughing, and said, "Well, that's because that's what we used to say when you were little!" Yes, that's right. A silly word game played by my mom and her sister as they cared for the toddler-Lizzie lived on subconsciously as an obsessive (or maybe compulsive) thought. And I never knew. Apparently, she also carried on this tradition with her own daughter, my cousin.

Even as a psychologist, I was staggered by the strength of this association. Who knows what other thoughts I have that I believe are my own but might be merely echoes of someone else's?

So be careful when you tell kids things like "when you turn around, North and South change places." Or whatever kind of BS people think is funny to trick kids about. Imagine the potential for evil. Wallet/walnut is pretty harmless, but I still have noticed it for decades!

************

Wow, the rarely-on neighbors' network is on (as opposed to the usually-on one) and it is 24.0 mbps! Though very low signal, of course. I wonder if they're across the parking lot?

8 comments:

argotnaut said...

Hookup, eh? You must send me Pork Roast's virtual coordinates.

Wallet/walnut -- that IS staggering! Now I can't wait to misspeak something and speculate as to how it was implanted.

liz said...

Well, she just got it, so she still doesn't understand what it's doing yet. Also, I think it's dialup, _and_ it's an old computer system to begin with.

She said something about having two AOL servers at once that are struggling for supremacy; I think she may mean older and newer AOL applications.

So, anyway, I'm still waiting for the actual address myself. Once her son gets things ironed out for her or whatever.

Andrew said...

Perhaps we can resuscitate Clu and send it to Pork Roast! (How's that for a string of seeming non sequiturs!)

Andrew said...

Perhaps we can resuscitate Clu and send it to Pork Roast! (How's that for a string of seeming non sequiturs!

Andrew said...

Perhaps we can resuscitate Clu and send it to Pork Roast! (How's that for a string of seeming non sequiturs!

liz said...

That's what I was thinking

That's what I was thinking

That's what I was thinking, too.

But it will involve a new case or hinges, including the cables inside. I don't know how big a repair deal that is...

Andrew said...

Perhaps a Clu repair job won't be too involved. Also, sorry about the repeat comments. Blogger's comment app has really been giving me problems lately. In this case, it repeatedly told me "document has no data." But I guess the document really did.

liz said...

I replied to your comment yesterday, and it said it worked, but now it's disappeared. Very odd, but I guess it's no different than the usual Blogger weirdness...