My first thought when I noticed this little candy's mismarking was, "Somebody at the candy factory has a weird sense of humor." Immediately after that, I began to wonder, "Is there some sort of contest going on that I don't know about?" I hopped over to the official M&M website, but there doesn't appear to be any such giveaway in effect. Everybody at work, though, agrees that this is probably something that should be pursued; somebody actually said, "What if the "T" is for "Thousand?"

I know, we have too much free time on our hands. Still, it is definitely a "T," not just a smudged "M." Believe me, I stared at it for much longer than could be considered healthy. There are no phantom markings.

And if nothing else, it was a good opening for today's entry.

Reworkings are in progress, and small changes will be happening hereabouts for the next week or so. It should keep me busy and, hopefully, prevent massive boredom while Eric works his mammoth shifts at work.

I don't feel it's within my rights to get into the details of her personal life here. Her trials were not my own, and I was not close to her at all. That about which I do want to talk is the odd impact that her passing made on me and on the other women on the list, for as little as we knew her, her death has us in shock.

Kay's presence on the mailing list was not gentle. In the time during which we both were members of this particular community, I was witness to multiple flame wars that sparked from her posts. Once, she forwarded to the list an angry letter that she had penned to a company with whose practices she had problems. The letter included many personal attacks, and when the women criticized those attacks, she turned her rage against the list as a whole. As was her custom after these arguments, she then ceased posting for a month or so, until she had more "big news" to share with us.

Unfortunately, her big news was often fabricated. The stories she would tell were often ludicrous in their proportions. Most of the women would ignore them; a few would try to trap her into the truth. When caught, she would tell more and more lies, until the contradictions were so boundless that everybody threw up their hands. Few people followed these conversations to the end.

The last "big news" with which she came to the list was the news of her new pregnancy. Unfortunately for her, a few women on the list did not greet her with the expected congratulatory notes. "Isn't this the same husband who you said was beating you, and whom you were going to leave?" was the general response. Kay was furious, denied that she had ever said any such thing, and left the list. That was the last we heard from her until today, when somebody learned, from another list, that Kay took her own life and that of her baby on Monday.

There was shock. There were tears. There was guilt, for the women who had tried to trap her in her lies now realized the extent of Kay's mental sickness. There was anger for the loss of the child. There was sympathy, and there was confusion. A few of the women with whom Kay had corresponded personally stepped forward to explain the circumstances under which she had withdrawn from everyone. Some were able to counsel us, though they had been unable to counsel Kay.

What a strange society in which we live. A woman suffers from mental illness, like so many others, and she kills herself, like so many others. Because of a simple modem, though, her death affects hundreds of other people. I had never written a single note to her; she could never have known that I thought about her some evenings and shook my head in derision. Yet do I feel guilt anyway, for perhaps if I had taken the time to write to her, had taken the time to consider why she felt the need to lie, had stopped to put myself in her shoes for a second, I might have made a difference. For a woman on the other side of the country, I might have made a difference.

She's gone. Her unborn son is gone. Very likely, she thought her actions would spare him the pain of living, or so say the women on the list who know something of chronic depression. I don't know anything about the pain she must have felt at the end. How very strange that my first brush with suicide, the first brush to affect me personally, would come from so very far away.

I suggested, with a sly smile, Katharine Hepburn. Three faces looked up at me, confused. I pulled a biography from the shelf and opened it to a picture of Katharine in a long negligee, and their breaths escaped as one long, "Ahhhhh!" Small hands reached out to grab the book.

As I finally waved goodbye to a small Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable, I giggled at the thought of these girls telling their parents of their report choices. "Where on earth did you hear about...!" I wish I could be a fly on the wall.