Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Walk About

Years ago, my friend, Theresa, and I worked as word processors at a law firm in San Francisco. We always listened to the radio as we worked. One day we had our earphones in listening to Fresh Air. Terry was interviewing a woman who had gone to Australia and ended up in the outback with a group of Aboriginals telling her that they had a dream telling them that she would lead the entire group on a "walk about" to find water.

You can imagine the tut tutting and gasps as our fingers flew on the keyboard typing some boring legal brief as we listened in horror to this story. Days went by in the desert and the woman and the tribe were near death with ants crawling in their noses and thirst making them delirious. The woman's thinking, what on earth is going on? I'm going to kill these people and myself. She begged them to stop trusting her, but they insisted and were willing to die in their belief. She ended up dreaming of an ice cube and found water the next day. Since then, "walk about" has been Theresa and my code for "hell no, we won't go."

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