Speculation

The missing plane. I have been watching TV off and on for the last week and have heard people dead certain they know what happen to this Asian plane that has disappeared. I sent a lot more time reading my book during all this because I hit the off switch when somebody proudly stated their opinion as fact.

All this reminds of the time a few years ago when Mary Jo Spitz disappeared. I mean like poof she was gone. The first person to notice this was Mable Switch who runs Switch Your Style Beauty Shop. Mary Jo was supposed to be there for a 10 o'clock Saturday appointment and she didn't show up. This was real atypical for her and got Mable to speculating on what happened. She called Marcel Dooze, her Sunday School teacher, who told her she had seen Mary Jo talking to a strange man down in front of the drug store.the night before. Marcel called the police and reported this. The police started making up  Mary Jo's profile by calling various people who knew her. Each of these people came up with a theory on what happened to Mary Jo. Sunday morning preachers in various churches requested prayers to go up for the poor girl who had either been kidnapped or had run off with a stranger. This gave the opportunity to hammer home the need for everyone to examine their moral characters and, of course, this shifted the scale to the side of Mary Jo's slip into the world of inequity. All afternoon there were meetings concerning the disappearance. At least one search party was organized. Parents brought in their teenagers from Sunday afternoon activities to go over the facts of life with them. One old woman was heard to say that if Mary Jo came home pregnant, she would accept her and her unborn child regardless of the reason for its existence. By sundown, the general feeling was that Mary Jo had been confronted by the devil and had succumbed to his temptation.

At 8 o'clock Monday morning, Mary Jo sat at her desk at Harper High School preparing for her ninth grade English class. She told Avis Longwood, a fellow teacher,  that she had been called to New Orleans because her Aunt Portia had taken a turn for the worse and was expected to go any minute. She left a note on the bulletin board in the teacher's lounge because it was too early, in her estimation, to wake up anyone to tell them of her emergency. She said she had tried to call people multiple times but it seemed to her every phone in Harper was busy. Her aunt made a quick recovery so Mary Jo was back and ready to resume her life in Harper. In spite of this the rumors kept going. And finally Mary Jo who seemed to be devoted to her spinsterhood and had no real reason to stay here left Harper to live with her aunt.

Now, I am going to keep reading and only turn the TV on ever so often just in case people give up on all this speculation.