Dangers of Blogging #376

Emma and Beary as newlyweds

The following two posts, "The Arrangement" and "The Arrangement: Annotated" originally appeared on this blog on the 23rd of November, 2013.  It was posted for less than 8 hours when I decided to pull it.  I didn't think anyone had read it until a few days later when I got a concerned email from S., my mother-in-law, inquiring about the phantom post.  She explained that the day before, her friend J. had called to say that J.'s husband D. feels the same way about J.'s driving as Beary does about Emma's.  Whatever could she be talking about?  "It's on the blog," J. told S.  So S. went to the blog and found nothing of the sort.  S. has known J. for decades.  J.'s mother had suffered dementia.  S. worried that her friend J. was showing signs of mental decline as well.

Later that same day, my husband called his mother to warn that the yenta was indeed taking this wedding very seriously and that everyone better be sure to take it seriously too.  Delighted, S. called back J. to tell her.  J. replied that of course she already knew that, because of the blog.  S., again, went to the blog and found nothing.  Nothing at all about any of that.  S. spent a sleepless night worrying about how she was going to tell J. the bad news.  They all knew it was going to happen, they just never knew who would be first to snap, or rather "next," since according to some, there were those who came pre-snapped.

In the morning, S. decided it best to call J's husband D.  Perhaps he would know what to do.  But as the phone rang, and D. answered, S.'s convictions about J.'s mental health dissolved into a new worry. What if it were S. who was the one?  What if she couldn't see things that everyone else could?  And indeed, D. insisted that the post exists.  He sent her a link.

And this was the dilemma that S. emailed me about.  Why was it that J. and D. had privy to a post that she did not?  I explained how I had pulled the post, but apparently not before it went out to those following by email.  S. recounted the psychological trauma she had suffered.  It's not easy trying to tell a good friend she's going insane, especially when it turns out that it's not her going nuts, but you.  And what did J. think of the whole thing?  That, as she already knew, S. wasn't particularly good with technology.