Saturday, April 17, 2010

How to drive a person crazy!

Both Anita and I needed a break from the insane life we were leading. The RAM recreational club was offering a trip to Aruba so I decided to sign up for a vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday. The anticipation of the trip and the inprovement in my work environment gave me an improved outlook of things.

I was still angry at Anita several weeks later when I decided to run a test on her. By now, I decided that maybe no one had to break into my house to steal my sworn statement and move items around a year earlier, but rather Anita could have been the instrument through which the change had been made. So when we arrived back from a visit at my parent's place, I decided to run a test on her by moving things around. Anita had gone upstairs into the house while I was busy unpacking the car when I noticed her school books in the car. I took the books and hid them in an adjoining room to the garage. Anita came down into the garage and said, "Don't forget to take my books upstairs."

I didn't hesitate a second and said, "Your books aren't in the car. They must be upstairs."

Anita became annoyed and came over to the car. "Where are my books?" She shouted.

"They must be upstairs." I replied.

Anita went storming off back upstairs. Pretty soon she came back down to the garage.
"My books aren't upstairs. Where are they?!"

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Let me go up and look."

I went into the house, picked up the books from the adjoining room and took them upstairs and put them on her bedroom dresser. Then I called down to her, "What are these books up here?"

Anita came hurrying up the stairs and into the bedroom. "How did they get there?" she asked?

"I don't know. They were there when I came up and looked."

Anita began yelling. "YOU PUT THEM THERE. THEY WEREN'T THERE BEFORE!"

I calmly stated, "Anita, what are you talking about? They were right there when I looked."

Anita was furious. "You know darn well why you did this and it's not funny!"

"Anita, I don't know what you are talking about." I solemnly answered.

Anita went storming out of the room and wouldn't talk to me for a couple of hours. I did discover that my reaction to the same type of incidences that the Nazi torturers orchestrated against me was perfectly normal. Outrange! Frustration! Anger! And that if these type of things were done often enough over a long enough period of time, it would drive a person insane.

I had become particularly sensitive to this type of technique since items on my desk at work and at home would disappear and then a couple of weeks later the missing items would show up exactly where I had looked for them. The first couple of times this occurred, I thought that maybe I had just overlooked the item I was searching for. However, when the occurrence became frequent, I began making the initial search more thorough and I would sometimes repeat the search over a period of days without finding the item in which I was interested. Then suddenly the missing item would miraculously turn up back in the spot where I had been looking for it. The whole process would create a lot of frustration, anger and confusion.

Several years later, Cuban psychiatrists would reassure me that my reaction to these arranged incidences was very normal and in no way insane. Somehow Nazi American psychiatrists couldn's see that!!!!

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