Gotcha!

Take a strip of paper, twist one end of it a half-turn (180 degrees), then tape the ends of the strip together. Voila! You have a Mobius Strip. You will find it is a topological form with some amazing characteristics. For one thing, you will find that simple twist has transformed your paper from a two-sided strip into a continuous band with only one side!

That is what I hope the essays and reflections in this blog will be. I don’t want to make or take sides. I want to assume a continuum with only one side. But each stop along my Mobius Strip will present life from a slightly different angle, at a slightly different tilt. One side, but many different views, many different adventures.

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It was such a good buy. I bought a wrapping tape dispenser at the Dollar Store. It was a big, elaborate tape dispenser. I got so much plastic for my money.

And I needed a tape dispenser. I mail a lot of boxes. In addition to being sealed, these boxes have to have all traces of their previous adventures taped over, concealed. So I was happy with my new acquisition. I even pictured myself starting a mailing service with this formidable piece of equipment.

But when I got it home and tried to load a roll of tape into it, I saw I had a problem. It hadn’t come with any instructions. How should the tape be threaded through the complexity of rollers and serrated edges? I tried one way and another and only ended up in an improbable Three Stooges dilemma for my trouble. I ended up with wads of tape affixed to my sweater, my jeans. I even had wads of tape plastered in my hair.

I brought in some consultants. But no one else could thread the tape through the dispenser either. So after several more accursed and cursing attempts, I put the dispenser aside. It languished on a shelf for months. Summer passed into autumn.

Then - a miracle. I saw an exact replica of my dispenser in a neat package in Walgreen’s. It cost ten times what I had paid at the Dollar Store – but I saw it had one vital thing my model lacked. It came with an instruction sheet.

I tried to read the instructions through the package cellophane. But it was useless. The sheet was folded and exhaustive. I didn’t want to buy yet a second dispenser just to get the instructions. That would have completely nullified my original bargain. So I regretfully walked on and shopped down other aisles. But I was drawn back to that dispenser. After unsuccessfully pretzeling myself around the package once more, trying to make out enough of its directions - I decided my only recourse was to steal that instruction pamphlet from the package.

I had never once before in my life shoplifted anything. Even as a child, a teenager, I had never taken so much as a candy bar from the shelves. It seemed an unlikely time of life for me to be launching on a criminal career. But I felt I had no alternative. (Don’t all criminals justify their deeds with some presumed necessity?)

I furtively scanned the walls for security cameras. I didn’t see anything pointed at me. But I couldn’t be sure there wasn’t a camera concealed in some unlikely object around the store. So I doubled over in nefariousness. I slipped a penknife out of my purse. Then, cloaking myself over my victim like Jack the Ripper, I sliced through the package cellophane with surgical skill and deftly drew its vital little packet of instructions out. I slithered it into my pocket, tucked back my knife, and continue to walk down the aisle, for all the world a nonchalant shopper browsing down the rows.

But I was hardly nonchalant inside. My heart was pounding. I felt almost dizzy with fear. What if camera surveillance had spotted me? They might assume I was trying to make off with something really valuable – something like one of those watches that had been stocked on a nearby rack. How could I convince them I had just lifted a sheet of instructions from a tape dispenser? Would I be hauled off to a police station?

Although I had brought the chill autumn air into the store with me, I realized I was now sweating - sweating bullets. And my heart was pounding harder, harder, harder…

Hoping my high anxiety wasn’t showing, I proceeded down the aisle as if walking the last mile. I was almost to the end. The checkout counter was in sight. And then – out of nowhere - a voice directly in my ear intoned in mocking malignant singsong – “I see you-u. GOTCHA!”

I dropped the cans of almonds I was legitimately going to buy. They clattered to the floor, in what seemed like slow-motion, endless reverberation.

I turned to face my accuser. I saw a skeletal face leaning into mine with an evil, triumphant grin. No, it wasn’t a skeletal face – it was an actual skull!

When my eyes finally focused and I started breathing again, I realized it was one of those motion-activated figures that stores display around Holidays. This was a sample of a Halloween haunting you could buy for your window. It would spook anyone who crossed its path. And yet – how eerily apt its “Gotcha!” Perhaps it really was inhabited by a stalking Halloween spirit, some all-perceiving vengeance from beyond the grave.

I scooped up my almond cans, and went to the cashier. I tried to keep my hands from trembling as I paid. But I don’t think I succeeded. The cashier was mercifully oblivious to the customers though, and just processed me mechanically. Still, I thought she might be feigning indifference. When I went outside, I took a few steps away from the building, then stopped and waited – for the long arm of the law to claim me. But no human enforcer came after me. So I walked a little farther, and then farther. And finally I was home.

After I had calmed myself a little with a hot cup of tea, I tackled those hard-won instructions. A few more hours of tape contortions demonstrated that, with or without instructions, the threading of the dispenser was hopeless. I ended up donating the dispenser to charity, actually compounding my felony I suppose by visiting this intractability on someone else.

So once again, the lesson had been conveyed – Crime Doesn’t Pay. But more than that, I’d learned to be wary of those animated Halloween displays. Perhaps they know more than we realize.

Lean Over and Look At My Stick Shift

Take a strip of paper, twist one end of it a half-turn (180 degrees), then tape the ends of the strip together. Voila! You have a Mobius Strip. You will find it is a topological form with some amazing characteristics. For one thing, you will find that simple twist has transformed your paper from a two-sided strip into a continuous band with only one side!

That is what I hope the essays and reflections in this blog will be. I don’t want to make or take sides. I want to assume a continuum with only one side. But each stop along my Mobius Strip will present life from a slightly different angle, at a slightly different tilt. One side, but many different views, many different adventures.

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I walked briskly out into the big, almost empty parking lot, but slowed a little as I approached my car. I saw there was a man loitering near it. It was too late. He’d seen me. I sighed. I was headed for a nuisance – or something worse.

“Is this your car?” the man beamed and waved me forward. It didn’t seem possible that he could be too dangerous. He was old and wizened. Yes “wizened” - not a word you hear much anymore. It recalls root cellars and your mother reading Hansel and Gretel to you.

He introduced himself cheerfully. “I’m Norm. Beautiful day, isn’t it? What’s your name? You live around here?”

It had been quite a while since anyone had hit on me. I didn’t know if I should be flattered or frightened. Even though he was small and “up there” in age, he was wiry. He could still do some damage. And it was always possible he had a knife or a gun. He might be counting on his harmless appearance to launch a surprise attack. Oh, all the TV shows have put serial killers on our brains. But I was polite and answered his small talk questions, as vaguely and evasively as possible without being rude. At the same time, I was conscious of the fact that that’s exactly how women get snared – through their compulsion to be polite, accommodating.

“That’s a beautiful Toyota you have,” he switched from strictly personal solicitations. “I love Toyotas. Always bought ‘em. They’re the best thing going. I have one myself – right now. See? It’s parked down there at the other end of the lot. Come and have a look.”

I’d already unlocked my car door, which made me doubly reluctant to follow the man. But again, that persistent female impulsion to be nice won out. And then there was also that ingrained reluctance to stanch the flow of any masculine attention, however unlikely the man. So I provisionally followed him, at a distance.

He continued extolling the virtues of Toyotas all along our course. Finally the fellow stopped short and pointed. “There’s my baby. She’s a ’94. Got 170,000 miles on her and she runs like a charm. I tell you, I’d never buy anything but a Toyota. They’re the best.”

The vehicle in front of me was an odd amalgam. I’m not familiar with makes and models, so I don’t know how to characterize the strange runt I had presented to me. It was a mini-mini-camper – a triple cross between a truncated camper, a scaled-down 2x4 flatbed truck, and a jeep. I didn’t know that Toyota had ever made such an odd fusion vehicle. I wondered if the man might have added that metallic shell on the back of his chassis as storage space himself. It was big enough to hold camping gear – or a couple of dead bodies.

The man continued his patter of praise. He opened his own driver’s door and waved his hand with a flourish, as if he were a model at a car show. “Lookee there. Clean as a whistle. And it’s a stick shift! I always did prefer the manuals myself. This one’s on the steering wheel. That’s how I like ‘em. Leaves your seat free clear across. Here, lean over and look at my stick shift!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help but laugh. Whether that was a racy pick-up line or an inept killer’s attempt to get me to bend down so he could bop me on the head and push me the rest of the way into his car – whatever it was, it was priceless.

The man seemed to take my merriment as sheer shared enthusiasm for his Toyota. He rattled off some more facts and figures about the car (camper, truck, whatever it was). He waxed nostalgic over trips he’d made in it. He got so caught up in his expostulations that he seemed to forget I’d never complied with his urging to stretch into his car.

Finally though I felt I really had to get back to my own Toyota, left vulnerably ajar back there. Like a TV talk show host running out of time, I mumbled some segue wrap-up phrases and started back. The man trotted along behind me, yapping more praise of Toyotas. When we arrived at my car, he insisted on jotting his name and phone number on a paper. He thrust it at me as I was getting in behind my wheel, ready to make my escape.

“Here, call me sometime. I live right back there. Call me. I mean it. Give me a call. I live alone. I get lonely. It’d be nice to have somebody to talk to. Never been married. Had a fiancé once. But she left me while I was away in the War. One of those ‘Dear John’ things, I guess. Soured me on marriage for good. But I sure would like to see you sometime. Give me a call. Promise?”

I briefly pondered what war he could possibly have been in. He looked too young for WWII or Korea – too old for Vietnam. What else was there? But I didn’t want to delay my departure with any more calculation than was absolutely necessary. I was just relieved this hadn’t turned out to be a deadly encounter after all. And indeed, I felt a little bolstered by this prospect of a date, even though I knew I would never call the man. Well, I probably wouldn’t. I politely took the scrap of paper he’d written his name and phone number on. But the triumph of romantic conquest has always been fleeting for me at best.

“Give me a call,” he repeated his urging. “I’ll take you out to lunch – my treat. Bring your Toyota. We can use your car to go to the restaurant. I’d like to ride in another Toyota. So be sure to bring it. Hey, you wouldn’t be interested in selling that car, would you? I wouldn’t mind having another one – as back-up. You can never have too many Toyotas.”

Well, this day had started out sort of flat. But it had ended up being more productive than I could ever have hoped. I had acquired not one, but two catch-phrases to chuckle over, to evoke as off-beat counsel when I didn’t know what to do. Now I could remember to “Lean over and look at my stick shift,” and I could remind myself that, “You can never have too many Toyotas.”