I-dot-I-dot-ippi (part 2)

It occurs to me in applying to G- that we have awakened the interest of the FBI. I have a file? Then I would hate for it to be flagged for any reason. I should follow through with the check promptly though it is just for a wait list. Is there an additional fee for this phase in the inquiry? The form is to be filled out in the presence of a notary, yet I filled out the form already, at the interview, not realizing it would need notarization. Do I get extra forms from you?

It occurs to me that I should retain a lawyer or contact the ACLU -- not with the hope of causing disruption at G- -- but to defend my interest in working pro bono for G- in the first place.

As I said, I am a liberal and was arrested at 11:30 p.m. in a conservative precinct on election night in 2002 -- November 5, the wedding anniversary of George and Laura Bush -- for having one of four headlights out and for being .02 over the legal b.a.l. limit, over by the equivalent of one drink. The polls had closed at 10 p.m. I had already heard that via cel phone from my mother, who was an election judge and the retired director of the community foodshelf -- in a community that imagined itself as not needing a foodshelf. It was days after Sen. Paul Wellstone's plane had gone down up north, killing him, his wife, and their daughter. Quite a large number of Republicans were out celebrating the victory of Wellstone-then-Mondale's opponent, Norm Coleman, a defected Democrat and friend of the Bushes, now opponent of Al Franken, and responsible in part for the Republicans holding their 2008 national convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul. By now, we have all heard reports of what police there did to protesters. I should not have been at the restaurant/bar that night to watch Republicans drink while Coleman and other Republicans were winning; I should have been at home commiserating with my mother, an impartial and registered-Independent voter. The punishment for my error was long and arduous -- how long and arduous I have written about elsewhere -- and it seems that it is an error that cannot be regarded as "over." It seems necessary to mention that I am a moderate, infrequent drinker who has never hit nor been hit by anyone else in 30 years as a driver.

The suggestion that I perform pro-bono work with "mentors" half my age is unacceptable in that it would only encourage them to think piteously of me -- I would be the older woman with the record -- not how I would want them to view me and not how you would want the world to view "mentees" should their traumas resurface in the future.

A few years ago, I was advised to have a second breast biospy performed, but when my doctor told me there was little chance it might be cancer, I waived the procedure, knowing they had left behind a little metal clip the first time. It was written in my record at the breast clinic that I was "uncooperative," a fact my doctor mentioned to me. I told him that I had been suspicious that they were poking around in women's healthy boobs just to scare them for the money. A year later I had a clear mammogram. Then this August, a large lump appeared in the same breast -- the right one. Alarmed, I rushed to the doctor, who ordered a series of tests. My baseline records were in Minnesota. My Manhattan doctor and the surgeon skipped past the clear mammogram and focused with frustration on the clip and the note and on not knowing what the result of the missed biopsy would have been -- "inconclusive" the Minnesota clinic reported to them. For a day, it seemed I'd lose that breast, but it turned out after surgery to be a benign cyst. The scar is 2 inches long and will serve to remind me.