28. 10:30 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.

"She had a hard life."

"Which of us didn't?"

"That's not the point."

"No? Wasn't it Eleanor Roosevelt that said 'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.'"

"So it's her own fault?"

"Maybe."

"Forget it. Let's eat."

A few months later, I was reading and came across some interesting information:

By definition, a traumatic event, whether it be objectively tragic or not, opens in the mind a corridor to the apprehension of our essential helplessness and the possibility of death. A traumatic stressor is overwhelming not becuase it is colossal--for it may not be so to the observers--but because it has a certain meaning for the individual.

Imagine two skydivers. Skydiver A has been practicing her sport for many years. Skydiver B is jumping out of a plane for the first time. At the usual moment, Skydiver A pulls the release to open her parachute. The parachute doesn't open. She is bemused by this, because she is an experienced parachute-packer, and she thinks that her chute should have operated. She will have to recheck her work when she gets to the ground. But she knows that she has an emergency chute for just such mishaps. She waits for another thirty seconds, enjoying the free fall, and then activates her emergency parachute, which opens immediately.

Skydiver B, at the moment she has been taught to do so, tugs on the release to open her parachute. The parachute does not open. She cannot believe this is happening. She thinks she's about to die. She percieves herself plummeting helplessly through space, and begins to scream, although the air sluicing past her erases the sound. For about thirty seconds, as her life rushes before her eyes, she struggles to find her emergency chute. Finally, she activates the backup device, and it opens immediately.

For Skydiver A, another dive. For Skydiver B, a traumatic event, nightmares and intrusive memories to come, perhaps for years. For an onlooker, two more or less identical scenes. For the participants, two very different meanings.

Laur grew up in Dundas, Ontario[mp3]º. I asked her to describe it for me and there was nothing. Though she spent the first nine years of her life there, she couldn't recall anything. "The only thing I can say with certainty is that an awful lot of bikes get stolen there."

With F--- again:

"Was her time there traumatic?"

"I don't know. She doesn't remember."

"Maybe the town's just fucking boring."

"Waiter!"

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