Hello Friends:

Have you ever found that sometimes people grossly misunderstand you? Fortunately it does not happen often for me.... I feel I am a fairly easy-to-read, open book. For the most part people find me kind-hearted and reasonably generous. Most people find that I have a gentle, but pleasant sense of humor. But on occasion a person, for no reason I can fathom seems to get riled up about me.

For instance, there was a fellow who was interested in photography and talked quite a bit about it. He was what could be called an advanced novice. I too have an interest in photography, yet I am at best an average novice. At the same time, where I live there really is not any sort of photography club or group that is active. I approached this fellow about discussing photography and photography issues.... hoping to find an e-mail friend with similar interests. We had a few e-mail conversations and then all of a sudden, abruptly he became rancorous and rather unpleasant towards me. At first I thought he might be having a bad day or two.... and so I wrote back again. He then became more irate.... irrationally so.

To me, unfortunately, this was very disturbing. I kept looking at couple of notes I wrote to the fellow. Nothing I could see in my messages seemed negative, and I could not figure out any way my e-mails could be construted as anything but friendly, casual conversation. Even though this was many, many months ago, I still once in a great while try to send this former friend an e-mail just to see a) if I can figure out what happened.... because I still cannot figure it out and b) to see if there is a way to start afresh. Thus far, no luck.

It seems especially sad when it is incomprehensible.

PipeTobacco