A Strange Story
Another Strange Story
I would have to say what my wife says about this story… this can only be a God-thing because there is no way it could be anything else.
In 2002, I enrolled in a technical school for legal reasons we’ll call Stupid Crappy Tech. I had to take out a large loan to pay for the classes. I started in Jan. In April, the school went bankrupt and closed. My money was gone.
I spent the rest of 2002 trying to find out what I could do, while taking advantage of a teach-out opportunity at another school (we’ll call New Waste-of-time Tech). As it turned out, the teach-out was a waste of time and I wouldn’t be surprised if I see New Waste-of-time Tech in the same boat as Stupid Crappy Tech in a year or so.
Sometime back in August of 2003, a girl pops up on my Instant Messenger with this message…
“I hope you don’t mind messages from people you don’t know, but … well, If you do, I’m sorry. LOL At any rate, are you busy?”
Being a veteran of the internet, spam and trolling perverts, I was some what skeptical but I responded. Her name was Beckie and she lived in Fort Mill. She said…
“well, I got your name on LiveJournal.. and, this is going to sound, umm, WEIRD, but I just wanted to make sure you weren’t my boyfriend. LOL”
That made me laugh. To date, it has to be the strangest inquiry I have ever gotten on the internet.
“I ran across your journal by searching Fort Mill, SC because that’s where I live. Then I saw that you were ‘seawolf’ which is my boyfriends old nickname. Then I saw you were born in 1969 which is my boyfriends birthyear. LOL”
So the conversation went on about general things, after I convinced her that I was not her boyfriend. It took several minutes to find out that she was waiting for the results of lawsuit…
“I’m just waiting on a lawsuit to finish up, once that is settled I think I’m going to take a few classes for webdesign, php, XML, java, etc”
It turned out that she was enrolled in a school which closed and was able to find a lawyer to help her get a resolution to her problem. Furthermore, this lawyer was working on Stupid Crappy Tech student problems as well. All I had to do was scrounge up $500 and send it off RIGHT AWAY. I called hte lawyer and he told me that I was coming in really late and would have to get all my stuff in soon.
THIS through up red flags all over the place. SO I did some calling, checking things out and found that everything checked out. So I sent off $500 of my wife’s money plus all the paperwork to this lawyer in hopes that my problems would be solved.
I got the final letter back in late October/early November 2003. All I can legally say is that there was a settlement and I am very happy with things now. Just in time for my wife and I to have a kid and finally get on with our lives.
In the end, I guess if it wasn’t for this Live Journal, I’d still be deep in debt and not sure if we could afford a child. Thanks to Beckie and my self-given nickname, all that crap is behind me now (hopefully).
Like I said, nothing short of a God-thing.