Dearest Cyber Friends,
  
    Did you ever feel like everyone was watching you?  Well they are.  And yes, it is a giant conspiracy.  And yes, everything is a giant conspiracy.

    However, the rumor that I am building a bomb shelter under the foundation of the barn with a dessert spoon is false.  That rumor was started by my children who will not be invited to live in the bomb shelter under the barn foundation during the coming gas shortage apocalypse.  If I were actually building a bomb shelter under the foundation of the barn with a dessert spoon—that is.  Which, of course, I am not.

    Anyway, back to Shalom From New York—Part, The Second.

    On a recent trip to New York, we (my husband and I and our oldest daughter and her husband) had what I consider a true “big city, bright lights” moment.  Our camera was stolen.

    For an entire day, I blamed the hotel maid.  I was wrong and obviously racist/evil and quite possibly stuck up.

    Working backwards, like the super sleuth that he is, my husband calculated the number of steps in an average city block.  Multiplying  that amount by the total pounds of protein necessary to fuel our visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and dividing the resulting co-efficient with the number of times I felt nauseous in the back of a smelly New York cab (once, but it was a doozy) Sherwood figured out that he had left our camera at the restaurant where we had purchased nine hundred dollar a gallon orange juice.

    “I believe I left a camera here,” Sherwood said to the assortment of servers, bus boys, and cashiers at said restaurant.

    “The camera guy is here,” someone announced.  They checked behind the counter where lost tourist cameras go to die.

    “It was here, but it’s gone.”

    The mystery deepened.  “Come back when the manager is here at four o’clock. Ask for Guido.”

    We left to buy trench coats and spy equipment.

    When we returned at the appointed rendezvous time, Guido, the manager, invited Sherwood into his office, sat him down, and proceeded to show my husband a security tape of us drinking expensive orange juice and eating eggs over easy.  From three angles. From the date and time stamp Guido knew exactly what time we had arrived to eat breakfast and exactly what time we stood up, paid our bill, and left our camera in the booth.  It also showed the bus boy swiping the camera—from three angles.

    Of course, Heather and I asked the most important questions concerning the video tape evidence.  We asked:

    Did we look good?  Was there any nose picking recorded?  How was our makeup?  Did we look happy?  Were there scrambled eggs in our teeth?  Were we nice to the waiter?  Did we look interesting and clever?  How many times did we laugh?  Did they video tape our “good sides?”

    My husband observed that watching a video tape we had no idea was being made of us eating breakfast was freaky.  That’s a direct quote.  “Man, that’s freaky,” he said, not to mention the criminal behavior.

    The investigation resulted in:  one bus boy fired for theft and lying, one digital camera lost forever, one memory card with snapshots of me standing next to a giant M&M stolen, and a security tape of my family eating eggs in a vault somewhere for—forever and ever.

    Ever feel like everyone is watching you?  They are.  From three angles.

    Have a paranoia free week,

    Linda (Say Cheese) Zern

        

     

        

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