I got a surprise last week when a random young man called me and informed me that he was calling on behalf of a certain acquaintance of mine to complete her federal background investigation. The surprise was based upon two factors: one, that she hadn’t told me she had put me down as a reference, and two, that we haven’t spoken since a drama-filled fallout back in autumn of last year. That was the last time I’ve spoken with her, and to be honest, she’d largely slipped from my mind save for the occasional reminder by the feed on the Facebook main page.

The man came by last night for our meeting, which lasted about half an hour. He asked all the usual questions - “How do you know her?,” “Has she ever worked for a foreign government?,” “Has she ever been a member of an extremist group?,” and so forth. Nothing major. With some of the questions, like those relating to drugs and alcohol abuse, I think I may have had more problems answering if the person in question weren’t so straight-edged. Anyway, I gave my recommendation and thus did my civic duty. I just thought it was random.