|
| News | Sports |
Business | Opinions |
Columns | Entertainment |
| Science/Technology| Weather | Archives | E-mail Us |
Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, April 3, 2000
Sinister visitor jangles nerves of blase newsies
Look: The last thing I want to do is dump our troubles in your lap. After all, you're doing your part: You buy the paper, you read the column. Isn't that, you are perfectly entitled to ask, enough?
At the same time, there's some stuff going on here at your daily paper that's just . . . well . . . kind of borderline weird. I feel as though I'm sitting through the opening stanzas of a slasher flick: There's been no serious bloodshed, but the violins are working themselves into a frenzy, and the tympanis are thumping ominously . . .
Just a case of nerves, you suggest? Too much caffeine, you say? True . . . I am nervous. Very nervous.
But then, my friend, I have reason to be. Somewhere in the comfortingly familiar confines of this building, a twisted individual acting out who knows what kinds of dark impulses is sowing . . . well, not exactly terror. Not yet. But unease? Consternation? You bet.
The Sticky Bandit is on the loose, and no one knows when he/she will strike again.
Now, we've had our share of colorful and in some instances slightly sinister individuals over the years. There was, for instance, The Rolled-Up Newspaper Lady: As we editorial flunkies watched in fascination (that was when we had a window), this woman of some years would stroll down along Taylor, whacking every second or third car in the parking lot with her rolled-up paper.
There was the fellow who worked here for a time, then left not entirely of his own choosing. For years afterward, he pelted us with poison-pen correspondence. Not exactly over the edge, but not that far from it, either.
I myself on one occasion had to come to the rescue of a receptionist who was under verbal assault from a pixilated octogenarian bicyclist demanding that we run his Mother's Day poem in the Letters column. (N.B: No poetry in the Letters column. Not then. Not now. Not ever.)
But that's kid stuff. What we face now is infinitely scarier.
It began week before last, when one of the ranking officers in our little hierarchy fixed me with a haunted gaze. The Accounting Department, he said, had been burgled the previous night - this despite the recent installation of moat, drawbridge and portcullis to forestall just such an enormity.
Ah, but the spooky part - the really spooky part - was what the miscreant had taken. Coolly, systematically, relentlessly, driven some mad sense of purpose, he (or she) removed every roll of Scotch Tape from every tape dispenser in the work area.
There's more - and worse. Not only did our intruder relieve of all those rolls of tape: He (or she) also took the spindle from every one of those dispensers.
Those in Accounting, of course, were the most seriously shaken - but ripples of apprehension and alarm traveled through the entire building. Given the kind of security those guys have, can any Scotch Tape dispenser in the building be considered safe?
It was a deeply disconcerting time. However, as is so often the case in human affairs, the reassuring rhythms of daily life re-established themselves . . . Standing around the water coolers in little groups, we chuckled nervously and tried to convince one another it had to have been a one-time thing. Surely no one would have the temerity to return to the scene of the crime . . . right?
Then, this morning, I saw my colleague again - and one look at his haggard countenance said it all:
He's ba-a-a-ck. The Sticky Bandit has struck again. The same modus operandi. Every roll of Scotch Tape. Every spindle. And the same brazenness, the same unspoken challenge: Catch me if you can, you pathetic wretches.
Even as I write this - late, late at night - I flinch a bit at each muffled footfall. Could that be . . . ? Is it . . . ? No, of course not. And yet . . . no one's laughing any more. Nervously we eye one another. And we share the same unspoken thought: This is an individual who will stick at nothing.
Brooks Peterson
| Talk about this column
| Other Columns | Home |
© 2000 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a
Scripps Howard newspaper.
All rights reserved.
|
 |
 |
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
