Paranoia, it's a family affair!

Some of you smart Alec's commented on me being "Auntie Geek"! I will have you know I go by Geek for a good reason: I'm cyber-paranoid. I have an unusual name (in real life) and I figure if I post my name it won't be hard to find me, and then someone will come and snatch my uber-cute kids. You might think I am being a little paranoid, but I will tell you this, I come by it honestly.

Way Cooler has a wonderful caring family. They are generous, hard-working, kind people. I am blessed to be a part of this group. However, the women in his family elevate worry to an art form. They come up with possible scenarios for almost everything in life that I, (with an Anne of Green Gables-type imagination) could never think of in a million years.

For example, this summer I had a garage sale. One of these wonderful women was talking to me and inquired in all seriousness what I was going to do for security in case someone tried to steal some of the smaller items in my sale. I never had thought this might be an issue! Then I got thinking about it a little further, at my garage sales I sell junk I can no longer stand to have in my home. If someone is willing to commit a felony for a chipped mug from a now-defunct real estate agent then maybe they've got bigger issues and I don't really want to confront them, I just don't need the quarter that badly!

My personal favorite example of the paranoia comes from when we lived in Texas. One weekend Way Cooler and I decided to take off for a romantic weekend. We didn't have kids so we could still do that. We booked our 34$ hotel on Hotwire and disappeared for 24 hours. We didn't tell our family where we were because we were 3000 KM away and it was one night. Unfortunately this was the weekend of the Space Shuttle tragedy that exploded over Texas.

When she heard that debris was falling on Texas a family member called to see if we were OK. When we didn't answer she got worried and called another family member. They both kept calling and calling. Of course, we weren't answering so their logical conclusion was that we had been crushed by falling debris. I can understand their concern since Texas is such a small state and our large brick apartment building could easily be pulverized by bits of the space shuttle. There were over 8 messages on our machine (they didn't leave a message every time they called either) and each one a little more frantic than the next.

When we finally connected the next day and they found out we were still OK we asked if they had heard of any on-the-ground fatalities and they replied "no, but you might have been buried in the rubble so people wouldn't know you were dead." I didn't even bother to ask if there had been reports of random rubble all over Texas, I was in enough trouble for not leaving a number where I could be reached in case of Space Shuttle disasters.

So, while I am a bit paranoid on-line I've been a part of this wonderful family for 11 years and they are rubbing off on me!