The Devolution of Suspicion

OK, here’s what happens.
As most of you probably already know, I spend an incredibly inordinate amount of time in the coffee shops of my fair city.
For instance, I’m in one right now!
I am an urbanite. Live downtown. Love coffee.
Love not being in my apartment in the daytime, because the dust shows.
I have long ago learned that if I just leave there when the sun comes up, and return when it begins to set…. HELL….→ the place ends up looking really good!
In this way I am able to utilize a huge chunk of time that would be spent cleaning up, if I ever saw the place in something other than candlelight!

So, here is what tends to happen if you sit in a Chapters bookstore say, for like nine or ten hours. Periodically, you have to get up and leave your table.
Nature calls! Or, you go on what I like to call a bit of a “book browse.” You stroll about the store a bit. Or, you have to go and get another coffee.
The conundrum of this is that I have an expensive laptop computer on the table, and it could potentially get stolen if I leave it there.
Now here is the wild thing I have noticed. Over time, I have relaxed my vigilance, in these matters.
Like… when I first got this new Mac PowerBook G4, I was seriously convinced that everyone else in the world wanted it. Hence, the thing never left my sight. I unplugged it and took it with me on all of my rambles, whether to the bathroom, or to the coffee counter.
The computer went where I went!
But soon, I began to look over at some other person, especially if they too were using a laptop, and I would ask them if they would not mind watching mine as I left town for a while. Usually they would comply, but I have already written elsewhere about the inherent absurdities of this action, so I will not re-state it all here.
Thing is, I have now descended to an even lower level of non-security.
I tend to just walk away, often for a good five minutes.
Enough time for even a really useless criminal to sit down and do some of his own data-entry stuff prior to walking away with the thing.
Scary.
This…. this devolution of suspicion. This thing that has happened to me.
Usually what I do now is that I will look around the room and sort of do a bit of immediate occupational profiling, if you will.
I will try to determine which people LOOK like they would steal my computer.
→ Usually, they all look pretty damn innocent.
So I walk away.
But before I walk away I will take the book I am reading and sort of fold it [turn it over] on top of this closed $3,000 piece of machinery!
What an amazing trick!
I mean…. what criminal-type person [who has been over in the corner salivating, waiting for this very moment that my bladder calls me hitherward…] what person is going to come over and actually LIFT that book off of the Mac-treasure?
Right?
I mean, that would just be…. → craziness!

The whole scenario reminds me of a certain Jerry Seinfeld routine. One of his joke segments, on the DVD called “I'm Telling You For The Last Time.”
And by the way, if you have not ever seen this DVD, umm… you really need to get it. It is the funniest conglomeration of laughs I have ever encountered. I’ve watched the thing at least 40 times and I can recite any portion of it, verbatim.
It’s a gift. A gift.
My nephew Bradley is even better at it than I am.
If I ever falter with a line or two, he jumps right in and finishes off the gag!
He and I should go on tour, honest to God.
The Jerry Seinfeld Severely-Plagiarized© Tour!

Anyhoo, Jerry says, We can't stop getting ripped-off. We're gonna get ripped off. We think we're not, we think we're very clever. We think we're gonna foil the crooks.
We go to the beach, go in the water.
You put your wallet in the sneaker, ‘who's gonna know?’
What criminal mind could penetrate this fortress of security?
"I put it down by the toe. They never look there."
"They check the heels, they move on."

I think I peed my pants the first time I heard that one…. But then he goes on, [and I’d rather not tell you the effect it had on me…]

You have a TV set in the back of your car and you gotta leave the car in the street for a few minutes?
So you put a sweater over the TV.
"It's a couple of sweaters, that's all."
"One of them is square with an antenna coming out of it."

Yep!
Caused a mess!

I just love that kind of situational humor though.
Because we do these things. These utterly stupid things.
Like me and my folded book over the laptop.
I am an idiot!
I need counseling.
If I lost my laptop to a crook, I would want to DIE!

I leave you with Jerry’s final jab at our stupidity…

So feeble the things we come up with to foil the crooks!
The 'Wanted' posters at the post office?
You're there, you got your package, you're trying to mail something, this guy's wanted in 12 states.
Yeah, now what?
Ok. I check the guy standing in line behind me... if it's not him, that's pretty much all I can do.
Why don't they just hold on to this guy when they're taking his picture?
THE GUY’S THERE WITH YOU!
COME OUT FROM BEHIND THE CAMERA AND GRAB HIM!
No, we don't do that. We take their picture, we let them go.
That's how we get the front and side shot.
The front is his face, the side is him leaving.
Why don't they put the pictures of the criminals on the postage stamps?
Let the postman look for them. He's out there walking around all day.
He's got the uniform on.
Can't he do something?

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