weird region behavior

[Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org>]

GNU Emacs 21.3.50.1 (i386-msvc-nt5.0.2195)
 of 2004-06-14 on WINSTEINGOLDLAP
--with-msvc (12.00)

The region behavior has recently changed (I seem to recall this being
discussed before):

When I select a region with my mouse, it becomes yellow (as expected)
and the content is saved in the kill-ring (again, as expected).
If I now move the cursor with an arrow key, the yellow region does not
disappear (as it did before) but is instead extended as I move the
point (luckily, the content is not copied into the kill-ring), and some
commands appear to be limited to the yellow region.
I think this is called "Transient Mark mode", but I did not touch
`transient-mark-mode', so I should not be getting it, right?

C-g appears to remove each instance of this "active region" (?), but I
would rather avoid having to hit C-g after each selection operation.

So, how do I restore the original behavior?

Thanks!

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running w2k
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