Date:         Tue, 23 Dec 1997 23:51:16 EST
From: Mike Barker <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      FILLER: Just Between You and Me...

[WARNING: This has nothing to do with anything on the list, so don't
try to read anything in to it.  It is just a little observation from
my daily travels...]

I'm puzzled by this one.

I was riding the T today, and happened to overhear two girls talking.
Young women, I suppose I should say.  Anyway, here's the dialogue.

"I'm not talking to him anymore. He hurt me too much."

The other girl responded with a puzzled look and maybe a mumbled
question.

"What do I mean?  Well, first he took that job in New York.  And the
first night he was there, he called me and said he was wrong, he hated
it there."

A nod.

"Then the very next day, he called to tell me that his old company had
worked it out, that he was coming back.  I was thrilled!"

Another nod.

"Then a week later it all fell apart again.  He hadn't even unpacked or
moved in down there--we were looking for an apartment for him up here.
And now he doesn't have a job here, so he's not coming back after all."

"Oh, yeah, I see what you mean, it's too much up and down, isn't it?"

"He just did it all to hurt me, I'm sure.   So I'm not talking to him
anymore."

The train rattled into my stop at this point, but I'm fairly sure my
head was rattling more loudly.

See, just from what was said, I keep trying to follow the swerve at the
end and somehow I keep losing the track.  The young man went to New
York, then tried to come back, and apparently lost the job offer that
would have made this possible.

But to decide that he did this deliberately?  And to break off the
relationship?

What kind of relationship does it take for "him" to dream up this kind
of story about his jobs as a deliberate way of hurting "her"?  What kind
of relationship does she think they had that makes such a Byzantine
"attack" seem credible?

Or does she think that the job offer was real, and he deliberately
lost it somehow--just to punish her?

Is this the kind of thinking that watching soap operas leads to?  If so,
they really should come with a warning.

Maybe I fell off the track?

tink