True Confessions 3

Last week when I was at the Columbia Tech conference I unloaded on an unsuspecting, nebbishy techie from Region X. The conversation went something like this. Me, (as I notice his ID tag) "I used to work in Region X (at PSX). Him, "So you must know Union Hack, aka Pete Persession (those are my alias' for the worm)?" Me, "Sure I do, he went to meetings every Friday for two straight years and never told anyone what he did or learned at those meetings." Him, "Well, I could tell you what we did, we worked on projects and I'm working this year on putting them into a filemaker database for the state" Me, "Do you think anyone in the real world will ever see them so they could use them and learn from them?" It was a hollow victory. Would I had the cahones to say that to his mean spirited boss? Probably only through a poison email.
After the meeting, over coffee, I told a respected colleague, who knew the nebbish, what I had said to him. He responded , "Oh, he's really a nice guy." I felt terrible. I got his email address and later apologized. Afterwards I went back to my car and couldn't find it. I noticed that I had absentmindedly parked in a No Standing Zone. The car must have been towed! I spent about an hour and half trying to find out where it had been towed without any luck. I tried hard to temper the self hate with rationalizations, "You're only human, you're getting old, you've never had a car towed in your life, etc." Finally, I realized I had confused the block I thought I had parked on with another. When I got to my car I almost kissed it. I came home, told the story to my wife. I related how I was somewhat proud that I didn't torture myself in my usual fashion. She replied, "But, if it had happened to me, would you have fumed for days with blame." This is true.