**Feel Good Friday is coming up fast this week! Which prompt will you choose?
Since we are kind of on a roll this week with all things creepy, I have to tell you about my real life stalker.
I want to thank Lisa Marie of The Domestication of a Party Girl for sparking this memory with a comment on Monday’s post. I had actually forgotten I had been stalked!
I know. I know. How can one forget?
It was a few months before I met Tyler. I grocery shopped every Wednesday morning at 10:00 or so with Emily who was 4 years old.
The benefit of shopping at that time was that there were fewer people there and most of the ones that were there were older or retired.
I had been shopping at this store my entire life, first with my mom and then with Emily, so I knew many of the employees well.
It started when I noticed a man staring at us hard and listening to us talk.
Now, I am very aware of my surroundings, ALWAYS. Whether I am in a parking lot or at the mall – anywhere. I am never La-Di-Da when out and about. Whereas I know 99% of people are good, it is that 1% you have to watch out for.
It was the way he was looking at us that made me feel uncomfortable. It was intense.
I looked back making sure he noticed I noticed.
And, no, it was not a “Come Hither” look. It was a “Hey I see you, buddy. Now stop it!” look.
He left.
The next week he was there again, only this time he slowly followed us around the store. We bought a week’s worth. He bought some toothpaste.
I dawdled getting coffee and made sure that I left the store with a group of people.
It was the following week that I decided I needed to do something about it when he took the checkout lane ahead of us and just turned around and stared at me when he should have been facing the other direction.
At this point you may be thinking, “Hey Girl? Just change your grocery day?” Right?
Well, I liked my grocery day and part of me was really pissed off that I was being intimidated into changing it.
Plus, the other part of me might have watched too much Wonder Woman when I was younger and I was ready for a rumble.
Of course I called my mother. My accomplice. And of course she was ready for a Sting too.
We are also the same 2 people who were pretty sure we could figure out a local woman’s murder and actually drove out to the scenes of the crime seeing if our theories were correct.
Basically our Sting Op consisted of my mom stalking him, the Store Managers watching everything and a code word.
Yep. We had a code word. Every good Sting has a code word. It came from Seinfeld.
Since my mom didn’t know what the guy specifically looked like I was supposed to say the code word when he came around.
Are you ready for it?
“TIPPYTOE!”
If anything, saying “TIPPYTOE!” loudly to myself while shopping would scare the guy into thinking I was crazy.
Let’s just say, he stalked. I muttered / yelped “TIPPYTOE!” My mom stalked. The Managers stalked and the guy raced out of the store with everyone following behind writing his license plate down.
He was never seen again.
I did change my grocery day. *sigh*
The code word became my Match.com tagline a few months later that only Tyler understood since he, too, was a Seinfeld junkie.
*****
I do
n’t know if it was the right thing to do or not, but it felt right. I didn’t like being stalked and I wasn’t going to be powerless which is why I took matters into my own hands. I wasn’t going to wait until something happened.
*****
My mom and I often wonder if the guy in question kept coming to the store to work up the courage to ask me out on a date. Remember, I was single at the time.
We laugh (kind of) at the thought that maybe, he didn’t realize how much he was staring / eavesdropping, etc. and maybe he meant absolutely no harm whatsoever. Can you imagine if that was the case?
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