Naked and Exposed

I think the neighbor saw me naked. It was just an unintentional flash as I walked past the window which, for some inexplicable reason, had both the shade and blinds drawn up. Fortunately, I think he just saw the top half of me which I’m more comfortable and confident about than my bottom half, but still, I’m a little embarrassed and concerned that we might develop a reputation as the weirdo, nudist flesh-flaunting neighbors.

Usually, the window has horizontal blinds that we leave down even during the day, although we open the louvers to let in some daylight. At night, we close the louvers and also pull down a hefty, opaque shade that totally blocks the light when the morning sun hits the window, allowing me to sleep like a baby, at least past a few snooze alarms.

So why in the world did I have both of them drawn up? And why in the world did I decide just at that moment that I needed to get something from the end table? And why did I think, ‘Hey, I’m going for it because what are the chances that, just as I walk past the window, the neighbor will be outside, which he rarely is, and look up?’” But I did, and he did, and in one mortified moment, I realized that he had probably seen me flashing my chubby, white self, or as I prefer to say, my ample assets of a certain ripened vintage.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I did a drop and roll on the bed to get to the other side of the room, ducked and did a guerilla warfare-style crawl out of eyesight. Still, I held out hope that maybe the light was such that, from the outside, I would just look like a vague, amorphous shadow. Intense light can be merciless, but diffuse or backlit light can be kind, and maybe the time of day and year and the quality and direction of the light would all coalesce to somewhat conceal me and protect me from myself, or—best case scenario—project an enhanced version of myself as a shapely and alluring but sufficiently modest silhouette, you know, like those on trucker’s tire flaps.

Over breakfast the next day, I told Vince what had happened, especially since I needed his help to test my hypothesis. But maybe in the back of my mind I was also thinking that I needed to tell Vince to alert him just in case my neighbor became so inflamed with lust that he would venture to commit a crime of passion like Scripture’s usually devout King David who impregnated Bathsheba and connived to have her husband Urriah killed after he saw her bathing on the roof. Ha, like that would happen! More likely, he could report me to the police for public, or at least quasi-public, indecency.

“I want to do a test,” I told Vince, “I’m going to go outside and stand at approximately the same angle as the neighbor and I want you to stand in the window and I’ll look up and see if I can see anything.” He agreed.

Later that morning, at about the same time of day as “the sighting,” I looked up at the window. Vince stood there shirtless and plain as day. He pranced around a little and did a Gypsy Rose Lee striptease-style chest shimmy that made me laugh, but it blew my hypothesis to smithereens because I could almost count the hairs on his chest—and he’s not even a gnarly, hairy guy.

If it’s true what Blanche DuBois said in A Streetcar Named Desire, then I’m in a heap of trouble. “After all,” she said, “a woman’s charm is 50 percent illusion.” So now, when it comes to my neighbor, I guess that whatever mysterious charms I once possessed are neither mysterious nor charming, but they just are what they are.

But I’m just thankful for God’s gift of a body that can enjoy so many things.

So dear neighbor, I apologize and, someday soon, I may actually be able to look you in the eye again, as long as you’re not looking back lasciviously because that would be just “Ewwww.”

A Sam's Club Fugitive

All I wanted to do was buy two tires from Sam’s Club. You wouldn’t know it from the clientele, who pose as regular folk with an affinity for mass quantities of Cheetos, but Sam’s Club is apparently an exclusive organization-- and I don’t belong. No problem, I thought, my husband belongs to “the club,” so I’ll just use his card.

After entering, I flashed his membership card at the “bouncer,” who was cleverly disguised as a besmocked grandma. I strode past her and flashed my card confidently and speedily, so that stopping me would require special effort. According to plan, she had an aversion to extra effort and let me glide by without close examination of the card’s name and gender. Whew, that was easy. I felt an undercurrent of exhilaration as if it was still the 80s and I had just slipped into Studio 54. I was in!

I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way to the tire section, where my exhilaration quickly evaporated. A cashier who looked like she wasn’t even old enough to drive asked to see my card. I started to panic but told myself that I was being silly. Surely, married couples can share a Sam’s Club card.

I adopted a cavalier, surely-it-doesn’t-matter attitude. “It’s actually my husband’s card,” I said, as if sharing a confidence with my BFF.

“No, you have to have your own card,” said the cashier.

“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. I thought that I could legitimately use the card, but had tried the surreptitious approach in order to avoid drawing suspicion or having to launch into any convoluted explanations. And I had made it past the gatekeepers. But now, this whippersnapper had the audacity to challenge my Sam’s Club credentials.

The cashier called an older woman over and asked if I could use my husband’s card. “Oh no,” she said, as if I had proposed a gross travesty of justice, “you have to have your own card, and if someone catches you trying to use that card (she motioned toward the card that was emblazed with the name of Vincent Santiago and I was clearly NOT Vincent Santiago) -- they can take it away.”

The words, “they can take it away” seemed to echo through Sams Clubs’ brightly lit caverns of discount commerce. They can take it away … they can take it away … they can revoke my privileges, diminish my life, strip me of my dignity, leaving me shivering, naked and cardless.

“I can take it away?” asked the teenager. “I can do that?” she repeated, apparently astounded that her position as a Sam’s Club “associate” had imbued her with the heady power of card confiscation.

“If you take his card my husband will probably never shop here again,” I said before I even realized that I had probably lied. After all, the real Vincent Santiago has been a Sam’s Club member for 18 years. He’s practically a founding member of the resistance movement against the dreaded MSRP, and he would never let a little card confiscation get in his way. (Note to self: As a committed truth-teller, I need to avoid projecting into the future and making definitive, sweeping statements about what other people may or may not do.)

By now, I was feeling guilty and busted and the older woman was on a roll. She clearly enjoyed striking fear into the hearts of cardless imposters like me.

“Don’t try to use that card,” she said, “or we’ll take it away.”

“Oh, don’t worry “ I replied. “ I won’t try to use the card, so you don’t need to arrest me.”

She clearly didn’t appreciate my sarcasm and made a face at me. And I mean literally made a face, scrunching it up like a sassy 5-year-old. Next, I expected her to stick out her tongue.

Okay, it was time to bring in the big guns—customer service, and I mean real life customer service with real faces and bodies as opposed to those disembodied customer service reps I always encounter on the phone who have Indian accents but suspiciously quintessential American names like Sean, or Chip or Heather.

 Maybe customer service could even award me a member card on the spot and I could bring it back to the tire department and bask in my newfound authority as a Sam’s Club card holder. Once I was ‘in the club” maybe I could actually buy some discount tires, whoppee!

At the customer service desk, I encountered a friendly, smiling face and felt a boost of confidence. “I’d like to get a membership card,” I said. My husband is already a member, so I’d like to get a card, too.”

The smiling face faded. “He has to be here for you to do that and you’ll have to prove that you live at the same address.”

“Even though we have different last names we really are married, but he’s in Montgomery County right now and I’m here in Baltimore at the moment and we haven’t lived at the same address for two years, “ I said, “and now we live together but I haven’t changed the address on my driver’s license yet.”

“He’ll have to be here and you’ll have to prove that you live at the same address,” she repeated, unmoved.

My story was true, but I realized that I was in a weak position because of my unusual situation, which made me appear like a total poseur, desperate for a Sam’s Club card. I resisted the temptation to offer a blood sample , allow them to run a DNA sample through some Big Brother database, or whatever it would take to join the club.

I ended up buying my tires at Sears.

My life is complicated.

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Feel the Love

I’m in love with a gas station.

First, let’s define love. In English, we casually use the word “love” to describe everything from spiritual love to lust. The ancient Greeks, however, were more precise. To them, “philia” meant virtuous or brotherly love, “eros” meant passionate love or lust, “storge” was natural affection, and” agape” referred to deeper, more spiritual or sacrificial love.

I love my husband, which incorporates emotional and physical love as well as commitment, spiritual oneness, and a reluctant willingness to put up with his misplaced affection for the snooze alarm. As Prince sang, “I would die for you.” It’s much more intense and all encompassing than what I mean when I say that I love Snickers bars.

My gas station love falls somewhere in between.

For some people, red symbolizes the Maryland Terrapins or the Red Cross. For me, “red” is all about Sheetz.

My love affair began when I used spend between five and six hours driving from Radford, Virginia, to Baltimore. After nearly four hours of road hypnosis, interrupted only on by an occasional appreciation for the rolling, maternal curves of the Appalachian Mountains, I would exit I-83 at Westminster and there it was—the friendly Sheetz, shining in all its red and silver glory, like a light on a hill or an inn in the desert, offering refreshment and calibration for the soul.

Sheetz symbolized civilization, refueling, and progress toward my destination. It offered practical amenities like a clean bathroom and yummy comfort food—warm coffee and a crunchy Snickers bar--all seemingly offered out of magnanimous concern for my well being. All told, the Sheetz experience stirred warm fuzzies and evoked something bordering on bliss in my innermost being--for real.

Sheetz was a marker, letting me know that the journey was not interminable, but would conclude within a reasonable and perceptible time span and that, in the meantime, Sheetz would minister to my most basic needs.

That’s why, when I recently saw a Sheetz truck with the slogan “Feel the love,” I did not resent it as a crass exaggeration or brand identification run amuck. Instead, I considered it a stroke of genius. Indeed, my friends, groove with me, revel in the redness, feel the shiny friendliness of your inner Sheetzness and, in the process, “feel the love.”

The Dump

We get rid of garbage every day whether we want to or not. I read that the skin that encases us sheds cells that fall from our body to the tune of 30-40,000 cells per minute, creating a feast for millions of microscopic dust mites. The cells pop off like loose tiles, no longer connected to our life force or fed by blood, they return to dust just as, one day, our bodies will return to dust.

We’re basically animated, organic garbage dumps that lose the source of our animation after an average of 75 years or so.

During those 75 years we create and rearrange lots and lots of external garbage, some of it very toxic. Therefore, we’ve had to create complex systems for disposing of that garbage.

My life is in transition right now, so I’ve made several trips to the Baltimore County dump to dispose of the accumulated detritus of nine years in the same domicile—construction debris, clothing that’s not worth giving away, excess materials from half-finished projects, half-empty paint cans, all the stuff I’ve stored in the basement or shoved aside until I can determine its value or confirm the irrevocable passage of an expiration date. Eventually, the value of being free from “stuff” outweighs any intrinsic value or potential for repurposing, and it becomes garbage.

The dump is made up of things we’ve shed, but instead of organic skin cells, it’s often, plastic, metal or something poisonous like mercury-filled batteries or corrosive acid. Nothing is more soulless than metal, but there’s still something sad about a heap of discarded metal that once had purpose. The metal boxes that washed our clothes or contained our food end up twisted and empty, with gaping spaces where doors once stood, all bent and askew, discarded and unwanted-- and if you’ve ever felt discarded or unwanted, the dump can seem like a vivid illustration of your condition.

At the dump, the cutting edge technology of the recent past is now just toxic refuse, a reminder that people as well as things eventually become obsolete. Things that were once shiny and new dot the dump’s floor like dismembered robots, with clunky monitors for torsos, keyboards that look like elongated pelvises, skinny cords for arms and mouse clickers that poke up from crevices like fingerless hands, begging for mercy.

In a way, the dump is an organizational marvel. Upon entry, workers inspect your identification and assess the contents of your garbage to ensure that only properly authorized residents can dump the correct garbage in the correct location. Then, you drive your car through the proper lane depending upon the characteristics of your garbage and its recycling potential. Finally, you arrive at the general trash section, where you back up your car, take out the trash and toss or heave it down onto a concrete surface about 20 feet below.

I’ve made it past the inspectors and the recycling sirens, so now I’m allowed to enter Baltimore County’s inner sanctum of trash. I open the back of my car, take excess wooden molding and broken flagstone out of the back, and throw it over the edge onto a heap of someone else’s garbage of indecipherable origin, except for the soggy pillow. The pillow was once a bright, white stage for a theater of dreams, but it’s now dingy, wet and brown.

I take my own soggy dinginess, psychically transfer it to the flagstone, and heave it away from me. It goes flying down onto the pavement and shatters.

My old stuff is now discarded.

I thrust it away from me.

I am free.

--Jeanne Johnson (Ms. Sticky)

Wedding Dress Blues

It’s time to sell my wedding dress. Yes, that’s right, my very own, iconic symbol of love and wedded bliss is about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder on Craigslist. And if I’m blessed enough to sell it for about half of the $500 I originally paid (before alterations), my dress will possibly become soiled by a stranger’s sweat while she vows her lifelong fidelity to a man she has a 50 percent likelihood of divorcing.

It seems like an ignoble end to a dress choice that involved blood, sweat, tears, and the near-murder of a “bridal consultant” from Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd. (NEVER go there!)

I loved my wedding dress, but getting it was an ordeal I would never want to re-live.

Every bridal dress purchase starts with a passionate devotion to research unrivaled by any merely scientific motivation. This is a wedding dress, after all, a purchase that should express who you are on your "special day." And figuring out how to express who you are on your special day requires looking at an endless stream of photographs of models with unrealistically wraith-like bodies wearing ridiculously overpriced gowns from designers who are probably gay. A colleague called it “wedding porn,” which is probably true in the sense that it involves lust, albeit for a dress, and voyeurism.

Apparently, these days, it’s OK for a bride to wear white even if she’s not a virgin, even if she’s pregnant, and even if she doesn’t know who’s the daddy. After all, discovering who you are on your special day is all about fantasy and if I want to fantasize that I’m a virgin, even though I’ve birthed three babies, that’s my right on my special day (so get over it Mr. Stuck- in-the Dark-Ages observer who thinks that colors should actually symbolize something). Still, I just couldn’t convince the Stuck-in-the-Dark-Ages observer in my head, so I opted for ivory, which is kind of like saying, “OK, I’ll concede that I’m not a virgin, but I’m trying to do it right this time so just consider me kind of a tarnished, off-white, wannabe virgin, who is at least going for virginAL, OK?”

So after I had torn out reams of samples and sulked out of the high-end wedding store with my tail between my legs, aghast at the $4,000-plus price tags, I perused the discount rack at Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd near my house (NEVER go there!)

Trying on wedding dresses helped me to discover the power of “structure.” What I mean by structure is that, if I suddenly disappeared, it would take my clothes a while to figure out that my body was missing. The older I get, the more my body loses structure, and the more I appreciate structure in my clothing. Still, the structure was so extreme that in some wedding dresses I felt overwhelmed and constrained by the dress rather than highlighted “on my special day.”

Finally, I found an ivory-colored dress in my price range in a shape and style that I liked. But when I tried it on, the structured bra cups were clearly made for someone with ginormous gazongas, not my middle-sized ones. My modest boobs floated around in those structured bra cups like marsh mellows floating near the rim in a cup of hot cocoa.

“That’s all right,” said the bridal consultant. “We can send it for alterations.” I couldn’t see how anyone could alter a structured cup down from a size that Heidi Montag would covet down to a simple B cup, but what did I know since I usually just buy clothes off the rack, minus the rack alterations?

So I ordered the dress, paid for the bulk of it, and waited. And waited. And waited.

Personally, I think the dress arrived way before they acknowledged its arrival. My theory is that the shop likes to wait until the last minute so that you’re in a desperate time crunch and you’ll be less likely to ditch the dress if you don’t like it or it didn’t turn out.

As it turned out, even after the dress came in, they wouldn’t even let me try it on unless I paid in full ahead of time. That should have clued me in that something was fishy about Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd. (NEVER go there!) So I paid and tried it on. And it was a disaster.

Even after expensive alterations, the floating marsh mellows aspect had not improved significantly, but other parts of the dress, which fit fine before, were now too tight, even though I hadn’t gained any weight. Instead of apologizing, consoling or reassuring me, the delusional “bridal consultant” actually said, “Well, of course it’s not going to fit because your waist is bigger than your bust.”

My jaw dropped. I may not have the proportions of Marilyn Monroe, but I can absolutely assure you that my waist is not bigger than my bust. I can prove this with photographs, diagrams, doctor reports, signed affidavits, or whatever documentation you desire, but my waist is definitely not bigger than my bust, and the fact that such words actually came out of the mouth of someone with the title of “bridal consultant” left me dumbfounded. You might expect someone who was dragged in off the street to be totally delusional and tactless, but a “bridal consultant?”

I wanted to throw the dress at her. Instead, I just abandoned the dress in disgust and marched out of the store, but I ended up having to come back, my chin held as high as possible, and retrieve the dress because, otherwise, it would be like giving Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd. (NEVER go there!) money for nothing. There was no way I was going to wear that dress, but there was also no way that I was going to let them keep it.

I ended up taking it to a different tailor, paying a lot of money for a competent tailoring job, and on my wedding day, I dressed it up further with some long gloves and a pearl- topped veil I got for $25 from Goodwill that looked great after I steamed out the wrinkles. In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my dress, I had a great time on my “special day,” and I did it without spending ridiculous sums of money.

Still, it’s just a dress. I have no daughter who would appreciate having me pass it down, (if any daughter really appreciates that) and I’ll never wear it again, so let’s just be rational and trade it in for some practical spending money, and maybe even help out someone who can’t afford the usual overpriced wedding gowns as well as sparing them a trip to ... well, you know. Call it Cash for Cloth, or Bucks for Bridal Gowns, something practical.

Still, it sort of feels like selling off a field of dreams. I mean, it may be a wedding dress but it’s still just a dress

… isn’t it?

--Jeanne Johnson

My Mission: Find the T-Machine or Die Trying

I call it my “T” machine, short for a Toshiba Satellite model number L305D-S5934 in midnight blue.

It’s not the sleekest model, nor as cute and snazzy as my burgundy work computer, but I own it.

Beyond that, we have a relationship. I like how solid it feels in my lap and I enjoy how it seems to open up to me when I flip up the top. It waits for me to communicate and then it takes me on a ride down the information superhighway, guiding me as I traverse the perilous Autobahn where one false move can result in information overload.

But my “T” machine makes sure I can handle it. Or at least it did.

At the moment, the T-machine is gone, stolen by a greedy opportunist who smashed the window of my car to snatch it, along with my red, Samsonite travel bag, my hot pink Sony camera, assorted female paraphernalia, and a piece of my heart.

The police officer who took the report was nice enough. He had puppy dog eyes and I had to resist the urge to give him a hug. Something about him was sweetly world weary and he seemed like he needed comforting more than I did.

“What good does it do to steal a computer if the thief doesn’t have the password to logon?” I asked.

“Usually they take it to someone who wipes the hard drive and then they sell it to a pawn shop,” he replied.

I liked the “erase the hard drive” part in the sense that I didn’t want a stranger gaining access to my personal information, but at the same time, I hated the idea that some stranger could so easily wipe out some irreplaceable files, photos, music, and documents for illicit profit.

According to the police, pawn shops cooperate by reporting pawned merchandise and checking to see if items have been reported stolen. I had my doubts. Pawn shops might check before buying something, but they pay money up front so they really have no motivation to catch stolen merchandise once they’ve paid for it. And it took me an extra day to look up my computer’s serial number, so I figured that, by then, it was a done deal.

Determined, I used my lunch hour to call a couple of nearby pawn shops, concentrating on those with the easiest access to the crime scene, i.e., work’s parking lot.

The person at the first pawn shop said he didn’t carry notebook computers. At the second pawn shop, I asked if they had Toshiba notebook computers and the person who answered the phone said yes.

“Did you get any in the past couple of days?”

“Yes.”

I felt hope rising--and Barack Obama was no where in sight.

“Well, I had a Toshiba notebook computer stolen and I’m trying to track it down. Could you tell me if it’s the right model number?”

“Well, we have a lot of Toshiba computers, how am I supposed to know which one is yours unless you have the model number and s-n?”

“I do have the model and serial number.”

Suddenly, she shut down. She wouldn’t offer any information other than that they deal with the police department’s pawn unit.

So I called the police department and asked to speak to the pawn unit.

“We don’t give that number out,” said the rude person who answered the phone, parroting back to me the script about the supposedly cooperative relationship that pawn shops have with the police. “Do you understand,” she asked me condescendingly before hanging up.

“Yes, I understand,” I said, but I was thinking, “Yes, I understand that you’re uncooperative and just want to get me off the phone and you’re parroting information of dubious veracity. Do YOU understand?”

So off to the pawn shop I went.

The pawn shop was located at 424 33rd St, just off of Greenmount, an area where I usually wouldn’t go by myself. I maneuvered around mounds of dirty snow from Snowmageddon to finally find a parking space about 2/3 blocks from the pawn shop. While striding down Greemount in one direction, three gangsta-looking guys came toward me from the other direction with their “pants on the ground.” One guy was barreling toward me with one of his hands down the front of his low-riding pants. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been intimidated, but not now. I was driven. “Excuse me,” I said politely, but there was an under-current of determination. In the end, they were probably more intimidated by me than I was by them because I was on a mission, propelled with all the righteous power of Moses about to part the Red Sea. And part they did.

I entered the pawn shop and confirmed that I was in the right place. “Are you the person who just called?” asked one of the clerks. “Yes,” I said, and her tone immediately became scornful. “And you’re so sure that your computer is here?”

“Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I do think so,” I said. “I’m looking for a dark blue Toshiba notebook computer, model number ….” I rattled off the model number and the list of other stolen items. I could sense recognition, even though they didn't acknowledge it.

“What’s the name?”

“How would I know the name of the person who smashed my car window and stole my stuff?”

Now that I was in the pawn shop I was surer than ever. I could tell by their duplicitous glances and closed attitudes. They absolutely refused to cooperate and it was obvious they were hiding something. Beyond that, it was like I had Lojack for Laptops in my soul and I could feel the T-machine calling out to me. I also felt spiritual opposition. It was so strong that it was physically palpable, almost as if it were pressing against me and trying to push me back. I wouldn’t budge.

Again, they gave me the same line about only working with the police pawn unit. “I called the police department and they said they don’t give that number out,” I said. So in a move that they probably thought would get rid of me, one of the clerks gave me the pawn unit phone number, but instead of leaving, I dialed the number on the spot.

I explained the whole situation to the police officer who answered but he said that no pawn shops had reported getting notebook computers in the past couple of days. That didn’t align with what the clerk had told me on the phone so I asked the officer to please investigate Famous Pawns on 33rd Street, and he said that he would.

The officer had a laid-back, sexy, sonorous, Barry White kind of voice. I envisioned him as a lady’s man, more inclined to chill out with some Courvoisier than to energetically track down a notebook computer thief.

In the meantime, I looked around at the pawn shop merchandise. There were cell phones, gold bracelets, amplifiers, and an ostentatious gold and diamond watch with an asking price of $2,499. I felt a combination of indignation, revulsion and greed. Maybe I could find a good deal!!

I reminded myself that these items were most likely the pilfered detritus of crime, or at least broken dreams. I thought of Roman soldiers casting lots for Christ’s robe as he hung on the cross, or the thieves that Ebenezer Scrooge saw in a vision from the ghost of Christmas future, gleefully distributing his material possessions.

I explained to the store manager that the police said they would investigate and, suddenly, she got friendly. “Oh, I had my car window smashed once,” she said, getting chatty and I went along with it, explaining how it’s my second stolen computer in one year and how nothing is covered by insurance because of the deductible. But I’m not fooled by her faux empathy. She’s just a profiteer of pilfered merchandise, trying to avoid police trouble.

As I’m headed out the door, I catch the tail end of a conversation and pause. “That computer is still here,” I hear one of the clerks say.

“Are you talking about my computer?” I ask.

“Oh no,” say all three clerks, shaking their heads in unison. An hour ago, they had “all kinds of Toshiba computers,” but now they apparently have none to show and they have no idea what I’m talking about.

I guess that, for the time being, I’ll just have to hope that Mr. Barry White voice does his job.

--Jeanne Johnson (Ms. Sticky)

HEED THE RACCOON, Part 2: Reflections on a Trip to Yosemite National Park

You know you’re in trouble when your checking account is $890,000 in the hole. It’s a long story and all I can say is that the raccoon tried to warn me.

On our first day in Yosemite, the raccoon tried to steal my dinner and then, when he started to recover from being blasted by my blood-curdling scream, he looked at me with a mixture of sadness, searching, and something else, as I wrote about in Heed the Raccoon, Part 1.

Our second day, we suffered a car breakdown, and had to deflect our plans due to out-of-control fires and road closures from rock slides.

Because we had spent most of a day waiting for a tow truck, we decided to stay an extra day, but thick smoke from the still-burning fires obscured views, so we headed in the opposite direction of the fires to Mariposa grove to see the giant Sequoia trees, a life-long goal of mine.

We decided to take an hour-long walking tour to learn about the trees. Before embarking on the tour, Vince asked me if I wanted him to go back to the car and get water, but I shook my head, confident in my ability to abstain from fluids for an hour, and because I didn’t want him to take the time to go back to the car.

A young, soft-spoken ranger led the tour. He didn’t even break a sweat on the mostly upward-slanted tour while most of us were breathing heavily. The ranger explained that the grove supposedly possessed rejuvenating powers and he had found that to be true since coming to work there in his 50s. It was funny because he looked like he was barely in his early 20s and maybe hadn’t even started to shave yet, but he delivered the line in totally deadpan, Steven Wright-style. Though clearly a joke, I breathed deeply just in case, soaking up the air that, at least at that moment, was smoke-free.

The trees are a marvel: Tree trunks thick enough for a small car to drive through, with sprawling surface root systems to soak up the maximum amount of water and perceptible personalities so pronounced that humans give them colorful names that reflect their unique shapes and growth patterns, such as the California Tunnel Tree, the Bachelor and Three Graces, and the Grizzly Giant, the oldest tree in the grove, thought to be 2,700 years old.

At the end of the informative tour, the ranger gave us the option of going back the way we came—the fastest option—or going off in a couple of directions, one of which would enable us to see the Faithful Couple, two giant Sequoias that had grown into one. By then, I was tired and thirsty, but the idea of seeing the Faithful Couple seemed irresistibly romantic.

Under ordinary circumstances, the extra distance to see the Faithful Couple wouldn’t have seemed far, but my throat was parched and my muscles were starting to ache, partially from exertion, but probably mostly from dehydration. Still, we kept going. I was captivated by the notion of seeing the Faithful Couple, and when we found them, it was worth the walk. Two giant trunks had fused at the base, joined in a stirring symbol of two life forms that had become mutually dependent, inseparable. We found a nearby couple willing to take our photo in front of the grand trees, a photo we could treasure and look back on in our old age, after our own lives were inextricably entwined, a process that was already well underway.

The next morning, on our third and last day in Yosemite, we exited our hotel, which was located in El Portal, eight miles from the park. The smoke from still-ablaze fires was so thick that it stung our eyes and our car was covered with ash, fallen from the sky. We found out later that El Portal had to be evacuated.

Back in Oakland, we had a wonderful visit with Vince’s son Jason, his wife Yvette and their daughter Lydia, but that’s another story. Oddly enough, on our way up a hill to see a steam train in Berkeley, Yvette’s Honda CVS--which until then had been an incredibly reliable car—overheated and we had to head back. We began to wonder if someone had put a California car curse on us.

On the Sunday morning that we were to leave, Vince loaded our luggage into the trunk of the rental car and then headed about 20 feet back to the house to get a cup of coffee. He grabbed the last bag of luggage, but when he went to put it into the car, the luggage was gone. Suddenly, he understood why he had heard car wheels peeling out.

When Vince told me that someone had snatched our luggage out of the trunk, I thought at first he was joking. Then, it started to sink in. All of his clothes were gone except those on his back, as well as my toiletry bag, and our notebook computer. And what else?

“Welcome to Oakland,” said Jason, clearly stricken.

Fortunately, we still had our wallets, so we could still catch our plane, leaving it up to Jason to make a police report. On the plane, we began to take inventory: the computer not only contained a lot of music tracks, documents, and photos, but also Vince’s business files and TurboTax, which contained our financial info and Social Security numbers. In addition to everything else, they had stolen the keys to the car we had left in the airport parking lot. Not just the keys, but the ticket to help us to locate the car in the airport lot. How would we even get home? And if we could find a locksmith at 10 p.m., how could we convince him that the car was ours, since it’s registered to my son who is living at the moment in South Korea, and who has a different last name?

I’ll gloss over the gory details, but we finally got home.

At first, there seemed to be no financial repercussions, and I still had all my credit cards, but I kept an eye on my finances. One day I was checking my accounts online when I saw a check had gone through for $728 to a Best Buy in Dublin, CA. It was a copy of my check, but with a different name and Social Security number. I realized that I must have thrown a pad of checks into my toiletry bag, and someone had evidently photo-shopped another identity onto my checks.

I spent all night on the phone making reports and, the next day, I went to the bank to freeze my accounts and open new ones, something I should have done right away. I thought I had taken care of everything.

Then, I checked my account online and there it was: In the checking account column, it said minus $889,000. I started to hyper-ventilate. Something must have gone wrong!

Eventually, I found someone on the phone who told me that’s the bank’s method of putting a hold on your account, posting a ridiculously high amount. I’m still leery that I’ll be held accountable somehow, but the jury is out.

Then, I thought about what else had been stolen. Our only copy, downloaded onto the computer, of us standing in front of the Faithful Couple.

And I remembered the raccoon. Now I understood that the raccoon was trying to warn me that it’s a dangerous world, and that despite the threat of instinct-driven thieves, there’s an even more dangerous version, predators by choice with no respect for hard-earned ownership or the investment of someone else's blood, sweat and tears, who want to redistribute whatever wealth exists with themselves as the beneficiaries out of a sense of entitlement and disrespect for any higher authority.

OK, so maybe the raccoon didn’t say that--but his eyes did.

Vince and I had to spend many more dollars and much more energy-draining time shopping to replace everything that was lost, but some things can’t be replaced, like that photo of us with the Faithful Couple.

So you’ll have to take our word for it—or ask the raccoon, if you can find him. Somehow, I think he was watching all along.

--Jeanne Johnson (Ms. Sticky)