Over the past 4 years I have been harassed and annoyed by countless Wild Orchid "fans" and ignorant people about what happened on the official Wild Orchid website message board in early 2004. I can assure you that whatever you may have heard or claim to have witnessed is COMPLETELY UNTRUE! For those of you who care to get the real story, I have attempted to include as many facts as I can honestly verify on this page.

- The last time I was actually in the same state as Renee (unless you count that one concert that I missed) was most likely in 1981 and at the time, neither of us knew it.

- I have never been in the same state as Renee since, and have no means of actually being able to. I don't have her phone number or home address, either.

- I have no feelings of hatred towards Renee or any member of her family. I am using "hatred" here as defined in Webster's Dictionary as "passionate dislike"or "detestation", not as another word for anger at or displeasure towards.

- Likewise, I have no feelings of hatred towards Stefanie Ridel, Stacy Ferguson, or any incarnation of Wild Orchid.

If you will not believe anything else said here, at the very least, you can hold me to the previous 6 statements. I have no problem owning up to what I have done, but I will not tolerate being accused of things that I have not.

In July 2003, I and several other fans who frequented a fan's unofficial message board ended up in an argument over remarks made by a certain megalomaniacal webmaster (this is NOT a personal view; it is an opinion held by many WO and KI fans) This resulted in a board-wide attack on my person, and led to me being banned from said board. I began regularly posting on WO's board, because it was not fan-maintained (at the time), and being a fan, I had - and have to this day - as much right to be there as any other person.

Several fans decided this was not the case. They insisted that, should WO find out their fans were arguing, they would absolutely take the side of those fans they had personally met, regardless of what the argument was about, or which side was in fact correct. Many ingratiating posts were made by both sides. I'm not sure if WO read these posts or not. Character assassinations by other members led me to create a page on a now-defunct website that I ran. (Stefanie had this website shut down, through the megalomaniacal webmaster who schmoozed his way into running the official site - or at least, that's what I was told. I have no idea what was actually requested by her, and what was just done in her name. She's never commented on it.)

I have never at any time been hesitant to explain my reasons for choosing a favorite member of Wild Orchid. I don't believe in superficial idolization, and the page I created explained exactly why my favorite member was Renee. What was so wrong about this? I honestly assumed that the majority of WO's fans, at least in the beginning, had previously been Kids Incorporated fans as well. I do not have a problem separating the present from the past. I distinctly stated that this was how it began, not what I still thought it was.

Almost immediately, the fans tore this page apart and corrupted it. From that point on, everything I said on the board, my personal website, and weblog (online journal) was taken 100% literally, and entirely out of context. I could not keep up with the messages being posted. It was like playing 5 Ping-Pong games at once, but with barriers in between each table, because no one opponent seemed to know what the other was saying. I found myself repeating things several times in the same day. At that point, I felt as if no one was actually listening to what I was saying.

Sometime in the fall of 2003, I began having nightmares. The actual time escapes me because the Yahoo! screen name under which I was keeping an account of them was deleted (again, by overzealous fans). One of the fans had led me to believe she was my friend, so I felt confident enough to tell her about the first one. The actual content of the dream was this: I was relaying to someone a nightmare I had about Renee being in a near-fatal car accident.

I do not remember any other details. Anything I would add to it now would more than likely not be correct. All of the dreams were different, but they had one thing in common: Renee was being harmed in them - not by me - but I was a helpless observer. I can say with certainty what was NOT in the dream:

- Details, gory or otherwise. If you have heard several versions of this dream and the details failed to match up, it is because there weren't any. I don't know any street names in California. As a matter of fact, I can't even say for sure if that's where the accident took place. I don't have a time of day or year. I think - and you have to understand my unwillingness to remember this - that she wasn't driving.

- Myself. I was not in the same place Renee was, which is why my details are vague.

I did not have the presence of mind when I awoke to write anything down. All I know is that the episode scarred me, and that it was only the first one. But it's the second dream that caused a Internet scandal.

This was very early in 2004. We were arguing as usual when a new post popped up - by someone we all assumed was Renee herself. The diary entries which are supposedly posted by WO are signed "Love Stef and Nae Nae", so Nae Nae is how this person identified themselves. Their first two posts were brief, impartial, and could have easily been by Renee. Now, at this point, WO had not said a single thing about what was going on, and at no point during the site's lifetime had their posting on the message board ever been discussed. Renee posting out of concern for her site was entirely feasible. (As I have been told countless times ad nauseum by fans lucky enough to meet them, Renee just about rivals Mother Teresa for her compassionate nature). So I replied. I'd gotten sick of fans insisting they knew what she was thinking. Now that she was there, why not ask her?

Because she disappeared. After those two posts, I was pretty much on my own for the next week or so. I was so preoccupied with making sure I didn't flunk out of college and fending off verbal attacks that I never got a chance to tell anyone about my latest dream. Perhaps if I had, the reaction wouldn't have been so violent.

I had dreamt that Renee was on one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

I would have been more than willing to let this lie had Nae Nae not made another appearance. Everyone was fighting as usual, and calling me psycho, and I was nearing tears until I noticed "her" screen name, but the post messed up because you have to have a subject line. I decided to wait and see if she would repost her message, and she did.

At that point, I was incapable of thinking clearly. I know that many people think I attach way too much importance to Renee's presence in my life, but that doesn't change the fact that it was there, and I had been leaning on it for quite some time. How would you react if someone you cared about deliberately hurt you deeply? I posted the nightmare.

It is well known that one of the leading and most widely accepted dream theories says dreams are created from a collection of facts our unconscious mind has stored.

"Psychiatrists Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley....believe that dreams are made in this way: During REM sleep, brain cells are activated that normally control eye movements, balance, and actions. However, messages from the cells are blocked from reaching the body, so no movement occurs. Nevertheless, the cells continue to tell higher brain areas of their activities. Struggling to interpret this information, the brain searches through stored memories and manufactures a dream" (Coon 262-3).

So, my brain quite naturally took the fact that Renee had been on my mind at the time, the fact that she specifically mentions Boston in the liner notes of WO's first cd, and that the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers came from Boston, and unfortunately glommed them together. I did not consciously choose this! Many people have decided that this was the worse thing I could think of at the time, so I just said it. These people neglect to mention that the very next sentence in that post was "I wish my nightmare had come true!" I was highly agitated, and I believe I actually misspelled several words, which anyone who knows me will tell you does not happen often.

In addition, I have been told (and my entire class heard) by a licensed, currently practicing developmental psychologist and accredited college professor that SCHIZOPHRENICS DO NOT DREAM!

This should sufficiently end all UNPROFESSIONAL SPECULATION about my mental facilities, thank you!

For the past 3 years, I have not received a satisfactory answer to the question since when does wishing something would happen actually cause it to?!?!?!?

Has anyone ever seen the movie (or read the book) Twelve Angry Men? It was even remade for you people allergic to the classics!

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050083/quotes

Juror #8: There's another thing I'd like to talk about for a minute. I think we've proven that the old man couldn't have heard the boy say "I'm going to kill you," but supposing...

Juror #8: But supposing he really did hear it. This phrase, how many times has each of us used it? Probably hundreds. "I could kill you for that, darling." "If you do that once more, junior, I'm going to kill you." "Come on, Rocky, get in there and kill him!" We say it every day. It doesn't mean we're going to kill someone.

Do you honestly expect me to believe there isn't a single soul out there who has said something they didn't fully mean? BE HONEST!

But the most ridiculous part of this World Wide Persecution is this: it was 2004 when I made that post!! How was I supposed to have changed the course of events that had already happened?? Riley's time machine?? The fact remains that Renee was NOT on either 9/11 flight, which makes both my nightmare and post FALSE!

This fact didn't stop everyone from grossly overreacting. Suddenly, everyone amazingly knew that Nae Nae was not Renee. In fact, several people completely denied any traces of this and the next person to post as Nae Nae's very existence. This in effect meant that I, for a "completely uncalled for reason", had hurt Renee. I was being banned from places that I didn't even know existed. Wild (pardon the pun) rumors abounded that I was planning on personally exterminating not just Renee but Stefanie, too. Then guess who made another appearance?

"This is Renee.", they said now. "I don't know who that other person was." The new Nae Nae again claimed to have the board's best interests at heart. Again, everyone else immediately stated they were sure it wasn't her. Very sure. Gee, I wonder how so many people who were all in different states could state without a doubt that it wasn't her? What made it even worse is a few days after that, a message from "Wild Orchid" appeared saying, "none of these people were Renee. Sorry!"

This is very stupid, people. I'd wager that the majority of you gossipmongers have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, or how many people you'd hurt when you forwarded false posts. If Renee was even half the person you've made her out to be, WHAT MAKES YOU THINK SHE WOULD LET YOU PRETEND TO BE HER? Would she really condone hurting someone?? I know she likes a sense of humor, but come on! This is hardly a joke!

From now on, if anyone tries to tell you about my one-woman killing spree and that I'm evil incarnate, please direct them to this page. I've had it up to here with hearing what I supposedly said and did. A very good friend of mine told me that God always reveals the truth. I think he could use a little help in this case.