Hi,
@ScribbleMuse!
Well, we've definitely got transcription in common! I did medical transcription for about three years, and when my mother began doing it at home a few years ago, I'd go over and take over her workload because her health was bad and she didn't want to lose the insurance. I know I got up to 155-160wpm in high school (they had typewriters in 1982, I tell my son!) Just always loved to get my hands on a keyboard.
Now that social media and the Internet are a part of life for many, I find myself (this will come as a shock to you) writing FAR too long posts, comments, even text messages. People will be like, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" but it's a -- it's a thing with me. I couldn't write a "quick comment" if I had to. And when I go back to edit in an effort to reduce it's size, well it gets even longer. "Oh wait, I need to add..." -- I am the queen of "TL;DR" and my archenemy is the 160 character limit.
Wonder if there's any -- ah -- connection between being able to pretty much type the speed of speech and submitting unusually long comments? I don't mean yours are too long. If the writing's good, hey, I'm in. So I don't think it's a bad thing at all, but it's ridiculous, it really is. Someone I don't even know posted that someone in her family had died yesterday (on Facebook, this was) she asked for prayers. And she needed them after I left my ridiculously long comment... man I was going on about "If you need anyone to talk to" and then, remembering I didn't even know her, I added this long story about how, when Sir Paul McCartney (I know!) lost his wife Linda, he'd found the most comfort, almost a breakthrough, in pouring out his heart to a gardener working on the lawn next door. Didn't even know him, but it was a turning point for him. It was a nice story, but oh my god really? I'm so embarrassed now I haven't even gotten on FB today, which is extraordinary for me.
(You're going, "Yeah, ah, no.... no that sounds like something requiring medication actually...." -- haha I know you are!)
Like this post? Was gonna have one line about transcription and then back to this case. I've already passed the "TL;DR" (Too Long, Didn't Read for anyone who's unfamiliar...) point and I'm still going. Medication, huh? Mayhap.... mayhap indeed!
I'd like to have a couple of tapes of Brandon Lawson speaking over the phone. I found even the most ridiculous voices were so much easier to interpret after hearing them over and over. It became a thing, "Oh, this is the doctor who sounds like he's an Irishman on Xanax" and "this is the one who, I KNOW, does this just to slow me down" -- and you know, you adjust because you've come to know their voice, know how it rolls. The thickest accents, the mumbling-est of 'em all, they got almost clear after several tapes of their best efforts to baffle me.
Not knowing how Brandon's voice rolls is hampering any ability I have to tell exactly what he's saying, and God knows I've listened and listened to that tape and tried so hard. I hate that his wife missed his calls (but she was undoubtedly at home and I think had nothing to do with whatever happened to him.) I hate that, though; we'd know so much more. I also hate that I know (and I do, we do, I mean) that he was running. Because -- well, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a grown man run in fear. Tells me that at very least, he'd seen SOMETHING that he knew he had to get away from.
Also, I don't think... I've read speculation of drug use, the kind of drug (meth) that might cause one extreme paranoia and panic and pretty much a lot of what we've seen with Brandon that night. I just don't -- my gut says that's crap. And once that idea is out there, whether it's been 10 years or 10 minutes since a person's used, once it's mentioned that they did? It's gonna change how a lot of people look at the case. I also discount the idea that he was in fear of those warrants being served or discovered. No one worried about warrants uses the last phone call of their lives to ask, specifically, for "the police." Doesn't jive.
Kind of wondering if my wariness of law enforcement in general isn't what's making me think Brandon came upon some troopers doing something horrible and therefore causing his demise. Like, "Yeah, what a coincidence that they edited the tape; there was no reason, they had no right, to do that. They did it to cover their asses." I just, I can see that happening. And all of us who've tried SO hard to understand this, well we're not getting all of it, so we're getting no real context; whatever they cut has reduced the rest to mere speculation and theory and outright guesswork. I see no valid reason for that.
You know what's creepy, it's when he's on the phone and says something like -- he's not talking directly to the 911 operator but someone else -- says like, "I'm not talking to them" or "I didn't call them" -- not sure verbatim, but it was right around the part where they ask if he needs an ambulance and he says, "I need the police." If I'm certain of anything in this case (and it's just my opinion, of course) I'm certain that when he said that, when he said he needed the police, he meant it.
He knew that whoever was next to him, whoever he'd spoken to while making that call, was going to harm him. This bothers me so much... Of all the emotions to feel, real fear is -- I've known real fear one time. I'm 51 years old and have always looked for fear, in books, movies, real-life crime stories... I went out of my way to see anything that would scare me, I've done that all my life. But something happened to me about four years ago that taught me one thing: I didn't no JACK about fear before. It wasn't fun, but terrible, just -- worse than any physical or even emotional pain I'd ever known (and you don't get to be 51 without knowing plenty of both.) It was paralyzing, gut-turning, and life changing. I wish there was a word for it, but it was... it was the way it would feel if your worst nightmare, your greatest fear, came true -- and "fear" is just too uncomplicated a word for it. I remember thinking, ridiculously, that "Wow, Stephen King's not even scary compared to this!" I felt I'd wasted so much time seeking out something that, in fact, wasn't "fun" at all, it was -- damaging. Like everything else we seek out, it came when I wasn't looking for it; it wasn't in a movie theater, on TV, or between the covers of a book, no matter WHAT the book club says. Like they say of love, it came when it came, not when I was looking for it.
Anyway, since that, when someone I know or read about or whatever, dies? I always want to know, right off, if they were afraid. Not if they were worried or in physical pain or scared like we'd be when we lose control of our car (that's bad, but it's not the worst) -- because I hate to think anyone died knowing that kind of absolutely undescribable fear. It would be worse than the death itself. I'm so serious.
And I think that's what Brandon Lawson felt when he said he needed the police.
I think it was a gamble, and I think it was spoken out of THAT kind of fear. If he was bleeding, then he likely needed an ambulance. If someone had been ejected (or chased) into some woods, an ambulance would be a reasonable request. I think he did need an ambulance. But I think that before that call ended, he knew that what he needed MOST -- was a cop. And I think a part of him knew it wouldn't happen, that it was futile to say so, and that he was risking everything by saying it. That whoever was close to him when he said it would not like it, and that things would go very wrong afterward. I really think he knew he was in something from which he'd never escape, and he just went for it.
And that's just haunting to me. It's -- I can't help but think if that were someone I knew, I'd be just all over the place until every person in the country knew of it. I would. I'd take out ads, I'd call every media outlet, write (godawfully long) letters to everyone, I would make it my life's work. Not because someone was missing, but because someone had walked themselves into a nightmare that turned real.
And I couldn't be okay with that.... not ever.
***Yeah, this added very little to this discussion, and I apologize for that. Usually I don't get so wordy until later in the day, so I didn't intentionally hijack anyone, it just happened. Yeah, I know... medication.
