Gloria taught me a lot. Gloria taught me about emotions. Gloria taught me about love; pretty much everything that I do know about love, and I don't know a lot, is from Gloria. Gloria's support, quite literally and directly, is what made me an author. Gloria made me an awful lot of what I am today.
I can't really remember when I first met Gloria. Gloria and I often noted that we couldn't figure out what our first date was, or indeed, if we ever dated at all in any way that would be recognizable as such to anybody else. Gloria was secretary to the Principal of Regent College, and I was on the Senate, as the alumni representative, at Regent College. When we were having Senate meetings, I would often hang out in Gloria's office, before the meetings, eating my lunch. Gloria was also a member of the church, and we saw each other there on occasion. Gloria's friend Carol had a place on Keats Island, and my folks had a place on Keats Island. We credited Carol with getting Gloria and I together. I was, of course, blissfully unaware of the early stages of this arranged marriage. Apparently at some time Gloria was visiting with Carol at her place at Keats. They were sitting on the porch, with a view of the road in the cottages, when I came into view, apparently trudging tiredly up the dirt road. Glory remembered Carol saying, "There's Rob Slade. I don't know why he's not married, because he's such a nice guy."
Gloria also remembered one of our first actual conversations being at Keats. It was, apparently, at a an anniversary for the camp. Gloria was walking by the kitchen and noticed me there. She asked what I was doing. "Making chili," was apparently my reply. "Pots and pots of chili!" I do remember that anniversary, probably the 55th, and that chili. The pots were ten gallon pots (see the earlier section on portion cooking).
So we knew each other, but it was Carol who got us together, as a couple. It was during 1986, the year of Expo in Vancouver. Everybody in Vancouver had an opportunity to purchase a season's pass, good for admission at any time to Expo 86. Pretty much everyone in Vancouver bought such a pass. I had, and, for the first month that it was open, I went pretty much every day, even if only briefly. So, reasonably quickly, I visited every single pavilion on the site. I had, in fact, written up a review of Expo86 as a whole, rating the different pavilions, and noting which ones were worth seeing.
Carol knew that I had a reputation for knowing all about Expo 86. She also knew, being a very good and close friend of Gloria's, that Gloria had not been able to get to Expo very much. So Carol started a campaign. She would tell Gloria that Gloria had not gone to Expo enough, and that Gloria's purchase of a season's pass was a waste if she didn't attend. Carol told Gloria that I knew everything that there was to know about Expo 86, and that Gloria should get me to take her to the fair.
Then Carol started work on the other side. She didn't contact me, of course. She called my *mother*. She told my mother that Gloria had not seen enough of Expo 86, and that my Mom should tell me to invite Gloria out to Expo 86, since I knew everything about it. So a date was arranged. Well, "date" might be pushing it a bit. I thought that I was taking Gloria around Expo 86 for the evening. When I got there, not only was Gloria there, but also my parents, and Carol and her husband Larry. So it was a pretty heavily chaperoned first date, if, in fact, it was a date.
Later that fall, the Senate, unusually, had an evening meeting. As we were finishing up and leaving, Gloria was also leaving work. She had had a terrible day. Not only was she working this late, but a family situation had blown up, and Gloria had been crying. Her eye makeup had run, and from Gloria's perspective, at the time, she looked terrible. I noticed that she was upset, and that she was leaving work late, and offered to take her for dinner. Gloria asked if I would be seen in public with her looking like that. In the rather extravagant way that I have when I am somewhat at a loss and my relatively limited set of social skills is exhausted I exclaimed, "I would do anything in public with you!" "Anything?" said Gloria. "Let me rephrase that," I replied.
If we had an actual date, it probably happened one Sunday, late in December, after church. I had hung around until everybody who wanted to talk to Gloria had finished talking to Gloria, and then invited her out for lunch. When we got to the restaurant Gloria needed to use the washroom. While she was gone, the waitress came over and told me the specials for the day. When Gloria got back, the waitress came again, to take our order, and asked Gloria if her husband had told her about the specials. We both ordered, but, after the waitress had left, Gloria, obviously concerned, asked me if I was embarrassed that the waitress had assumed that Gloria was my wife. I was not concerned. If anything, I thought it was a little funny: it was an obvious mistake to make. We were a couple, out for lunch, obviously no longer in the bloom of our youth, and therefore the most obvious assumption would be that we were man and wife.
But it points out something, that became rather important, later, in both our life together, and in my career. At this point, before we were married, I had not started my research into security, and therefore my security career. I am a security maven. I am an expert in security, and therefore, to a certain extent, in privacy as well. But, as far back as I can remember, privacy has not been important to me, personally. Of all the people who say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from surveillance, I am probably one of the people who really believes that personally. (Mind you, I tend not to accept that argument, in terms of security, from anybody who is actually wearing clothes at the time.)
But privacy was very important to Gloria. Gloria has had unkind things said about her for pretty much all of her life. She was put down about her weight, her size, her appearance, her choices, in very many ways, by very many people, over a long period of time. She became very sensitive to what people said about her. Not overly sensitive: I rather suspect that she only really represents the way most people feel about their own personal privacy, their own appearance, their own abilities. Most people feel this personal sense of privacy. They don't really know what privacy *is*, but they don't like it when people make comments about them, particularly anything negative. They don't like it when people talk behind their back. I represent an outlier. While I don't particularly like it, I feel that there is pretty much nothing I can do about it, and that, for the most part, it doesn't really affect me in any material way. Most of the people who are going to make negative comments about me are not in a position to affect my life, my job, my salary, or any particular opportunities that I might have. So, basically, I have been able, for the most part, to ignore and forget any such comments. I do care, in some minor way, about what people think of me, but, if it doesn't really affect me directly, it shouldn't matter, and so I don't spend time worrying about it. The waitress, for example, would not be someone that we would see again, so it didn't matter what she thought about our status. At least not to me.
But the fact that it mattered to Gloria, did matter to me, particularly after we married. Therefore, when I was doing something that affected both of us, I made sure that I was protecting our privacy as a couple. And, because this was a deliberate choice, that I had to think about, it informed my ideas about privacy. In terms of security and privacy, I was, because I didn't feel any problem personally, able to view situations objectively, without emotions clouding my analysis. But, because I understood that it was important to other people (starting with Gloria), I took privacy seriously, and did do the analysis. I think this actually helped with my security career, and my thoughts about privacy in general.
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