The Hangover

I owe my existence to a hangover. If not for a hangover that occurred back in 1966, you would not be reading this blog post right now.
My recent vlog about how Ruth and I became a couple got me thinking about how my parents met. My mom told me the story a long time ago, but I hadn't thought about it in a while. When I think about it now, I realize that I'm pretty lucky to even exist.
My Mom and Dad met at a ski lodge. My Mom was there with a bunch of her female co-workers from the bank she worked at. They were looking to have some fun. My Dad was there on a weekend leave with a bunch of his Air Force buddies. They were looking for - well, you know. In any case, my Dad and his buddies had gotten there the night before, and my Dad had gotten completely smashed. My Dad had an awful hangover the next day, and he was in no mood to drink that day. When my Dad approached my Mom that day, he was one of the few guys in the lodge who wasn't rowdy and drunk. This gave my Mom the impression that my Dad was a really nice guy, so she agreed to spend some time with him that day. If my Dad had been drinking that day, there was no way my Mom would have even talked to him. Thus, I owe my existence to a hangover.
This got me thinking about all sorts of "Back to the Future"-type scenarios. What if something changed in the space-time continuum that made my Dad decide not to drink that night? I could see myself going back in time to that night, and trying to goad my Dad into a drinking contest.

Me: Come on Rich! Have another Jack Daniels! What are you, some kind of pussy!" ( My Dad is also named Rich ) C'mon, my grandma can drink more than you!

In any case, I haven't really been a drinker since learning a few lessons in college, but thank you alcohol, I owe you a lot.

Speaking of my Dad, I just found out that he has a facebook page, under his real name. We have the same name, which of course means that there is a facebook page out there with my real name. I found this out because my Dad just sent a facebook friends request to Ruth, who has a facebook page under her real name. Ruth isn't really into social networking at all, but she got a facebook page a few months ago because she wanted to view photos of one her friend's kids. Considering that she doesn't really want to do social networking, I should have advised her to create a facebook account under a fake last name ( as I did ). As soon as she created an account and became facebook friends with this friend of hers, she started to get all sorts of friends requests from both her friends and my friends. She also found herself getting tagged in photos, including a photo from 8th grade that she was not happy to see online. Now that my real name is showing up on Ruth's facebook friends list, I'm afraid that my Dad is going to get flooded with facebook friends requests from my friends ( well perhaps not, but if his profile doesn't have a picture of him, he certainly will ). If my Dad doesn't confirm these requests, my friends are going to think that I'm being some kind of stuck-up jerk. Well, I'm sure they'll figure out it's not my page eventually, but I don't want anyone to get a false impression even for a little bit. Anyway, at this point, I really don't want my IRL friends to know I have a facebook page under a fake name. I really prefer to have an online life which is distinct from my IRL life. I think a lot of this feeling is rooted in YouTube. My online life really started with YT, and I've always had a desire to build my YT subscriber list without soliciting a lot of help from IRL friends. I also feel like I get to see my IRL friends as much as I need to IRL, and if my IRL friends entered my online life, they might dominate it so much that I wouldn't meet as many new people online. I like meeting new people, so for now IRL and online life will remain separate.

Anyway, the two lessons from the story above are ...

1) C'mon guys, don't name your son after yourself. It's really just an ego trip if you do this, and it leads to all sorts of confusion for the rest of your life.
2) If you don't want to get attention on the Internet, don't use your real name.

Lesson number two reminds me of a funny story. Sometime in late 1997 or early 1998, Ruth was putting together a resume to apply for residency programs. She had once worked on a research project with somebody named Francisco Garcia, and wanted to contact him to see if she could cite the work she did for the project on her resume. Unfortunately, see didn't have his email address, so she did an internet search which yielded about 100 email addresses attached to the name "Francisco Garcia". When I got home one day, I found her frantically typing emails into our email application. She told me that she needed to send out 100 identical emails to 100 difference addresses. I watched her for a minute and noticed that she was actually typing out the full message for each email. So, at this point, I needed to explain to Ruth how "Copy and Paste" works in windows applications. Apparently, she wasn't aware that she could do this.
In any case, while I found it funny that somebody on the verge of graduating from medical school didn't know how to use "Copy and Paste", what happened next was even more funny ( inevitable, but still quite funny ). Within a day of sending out the 100 emails, Ruth started to get responses. None of them were from the right Francisco, but at least 5 of them were offers to have sexual relations. My favorite one said something along the following lines ...

"I am not the Francisco you are looking for. I am better than the other Francisco. I am the ultimate male in the world."

What makes this even more interesting is that while Ruth did give her real name on the email, the email address had my real name on it. Thus, these fellows were propositioning Ruth via email, even though they knew it was quite likely that her husband/boyfriend would be reading the email.

Well, I kinda gotta give some of those Francisco Gracia's credit. They certainly have a lot of balls!

Geez, I can see why the Internet can be such a scary place for woman sometimes. It's amazing the more women don't get scared off.

Rich