Way back I wrote about a truck driver for my local lumberyard whom I described as looking like a toothless, tattooed pirate, with a beard but no peg leg. Given his looks and his job, I was flabbergasted by his knowledge of digital cameras and laptop computers, until I found out that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d also written significant software for some major Boston firms way back in the C++ days. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d tired of computers and suits, but not of work, and drove trucks to busy.<\/p>\n
The blog post was one of my what-an-idiot-I-can-be stories, which happens to be my favorite kind. However, because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d added a link to his wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s high level Flashy website, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d followed my tracks back to the story and roasted my ass with a fiery email. How can I call her husband toothless? How can I make fun of his tattoos? She’d missed the premise of my story.<\/p>\n
There are really smart talented people out there and they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all come in BMW’s with a Harvard degree stapled to their foreheads. Readers of the blog, and Adam in particular, know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve embarrassed myself in the past by jumping to similar wrong-headed conclusions.<\/p>\n
I tried to explain to her that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really think John looked like a pirate (He wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t toothless, he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have that many tattoos), and that I embellish my stories to keep the attention of the three people reading them. Didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter. Lobbing reason at her was like bouncing tennis balls off the hull of a battleship. She was religious, she said, and she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want other people thinking unkind thoughts of her spouse. No, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what being born again has to do with protecting your reputation against cyberspace writers.<\/p>\n
Because I was going to have face John, whom I liked, I apologized and I pulled the story from my website.<\/p>\n
We met only once , months after his wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s email, and neither of us said a thing. He showed no anger, but I did notice he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d filled those empty spaces in his not-so pearly whites. Since then he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fallen to the deep cuts of an industry in trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Way back I wrote about a truck driver for my local lumberyard whom I described as looking like a toothless, tattooed pirate, with a beard but no peg leg. Given his looks and his job, I was flabbergasted by his … Continue reading