Angels in my Inbox

I had heard in the past that I am "courageous", but it took everything I had to write a letter - via snail mail - to someone whose name matched that of someone I met in college when I found an address via Google. In a paraphrase of a famous line from Highlander, there was only one...

I have an odd sense of humor, and it comes out at times like this, as I "introduced" myself in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner...

And in my email inbox a few days later, a letter from him stating how he and his wife got a chuckle from my letter. Nice! We're back in touch with a college friend! It will be fun to reminisce about "the good old days"!

I go into my Facebook, and there is post after post about the Stanford Rape Case. The combination of the two sends me back 36 years ago, when I met both the man whom I just reconnected with as well as my husband. Not only was it at the end of my teen years, but it was, in many ways, the end of my innocence.

My father was dying of lymphoma as I was beginning my college education, which was the semester I met my husband (who was, at that time, seeing another woman). (I was going to classes and staying in the dorms during the week and going home to help weekends with a dying family member, trying to pretend nothing untoward was going on. It was one of those times I was called courageous.)

The second semester of college, paid for with Social Security Survivor benefits, my dad had passed and I was, to be blunt, mentally unstable at best. That was when I met this other friend...whose love of Bloody Marys became a part of the character in my first book, Kyle Benton. The second semester was also when I met a group that called themselves "Section 8"  as well as several other good people.

I consider them my angels, because without them coming to invite me out, I would have been sitting in my room, feeling sorry for myself, remembering the stress of that first semester. In addition to the stress of watching my father die, the first semester had also introduced me to someone like the Stanford Rapist - a man who feels his own needs more important than anything involving anyone else in the world. My Stanford Rapist was a little different, however, as he wanted us to marry and I didn't - so he drugged me and raped me for weeks, trying to force the marriage by getting me pregnant...

And as I said, that second semester (and onward for several years), I consider myself to have been mentally unstable. The fact that these wonderful friends helped me survive will always be appreciated.

As to the rapist, I have one thought that goes back to the one whom I only survived with the help of yet another angel, who thought more of helping me than what his crazy roomie might be able to do to him....

I would love to see one sentence for all proven rapists, as this Stanford kid was literally caught in the act and would fall into the "proven" category. Nail their balls to a stump and push them over backward, then they can go home. Consider it a punishment, a preventive measure, and the end of that line in the gene pool all at one simple move.

Yes, I know. Barbaric, isn't it. But think about it....

You get caught like this kid was. Instead of wasting all that time, money and tribulation, not to mention prolonging a poor victims mental anquish by making her wait from January to June to find out this jerk is just getting a slap on the hand, you take him out, pin his balls to the stump, push, and take him to the infirmary.

I pray the young woman has angels like I was granted to get her through....

Addendum 6/12/16: A friend posted this on Facebook, and I know each day that, with these friends, I am truly blessed: