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.