I Am Not A Crazed Corporate Lackey

I recently read a social media thread in which the original poster (OP) complained about “crazed corporate lackeys” (CCL). According to the OP, in this instance a CCL is a person who refuses to let volunteers for political candidates enter the lackey’s home or property or the property of a condo/retirement community where the lackey resides.

Here’s the other side of the coin, so to speak. And just to let you know, I am not a crazed corporate lackey. I am not paranoid. I am not a hermit. And to shut down potential trolls, I am not a fan of either Trump or Hillary. However, I am a private person who was the target of a crazy individual back in the Late Jurassic Period. Having to put up with a prowler, busted window panes, and strange phone calls was not a pleasant experience.

Although I love getting together with people I know and like, I do not love strangers knocking on my door for any reason, especially strangers from the Nielsen organization (long, weird story). Fortunately, I live in a gated complex, and I also have a sign in the window, written in two languages, that reads Writer/Editor at Work. Please Do Not Disturb. (Unless it is an emergency. Then please DO disturb.)

I respect the right of political volunteers to solicit votes for their candidates. Yes, that is democracy in action, as the OP pointed out. At the same time, please respect my right to choose to NOT respond to the knock on my door. That, too, is democracy in action.

Maybe I Shouldn't Have Abandoned This Project

In 1995, I wrote a rough draft of what probably would have become the longest personal essay in the history of the written word. I titled it *Al, the Prowler, and the Siege at Dodge Boulevard*. The project was a memoir recounting “events” that I either, willingly or unwillingly, had participated in or had witnessed between 1961 and 1978. The time frame stretched from my first semester in college to the years when lived in an apartment complex off Speedway Boulevard in Tucson, Arizona.

A lot of memorable and sometimes crazy things happened during those times. There were days when I felt as if my friends and I were characters in some weird sitcom. Today, many of those things would be fodder for blog posts (and probably will be), and a few of them would be fodder for a reality show. Happenings included (but were not limited to) ditzy teenagers, local bad boys, a phantom prowler, a real prowler, crank phone calls, police reports, a couple of subpoenas, and a busted window.

I abandoned the project about a month after I started it.

I had completed the first draft when a man who had once been a good friend of mine died. I put the essay away and didn’t look at it again until a few years ago. Once in a while, I take it out, thinking that maybe I should finish the story.

I woke up about 3 a.m. today and started thinking about why I wanted to write that essay. In 1995, the message I wanted to get across is this: Sometimes things (and people) are not what they seem to be on the surface—or what you dearly or desperately want them to be. Sometimes the people who are supposed to love and protect you are the ones who are trying to hurt you. And sometimes, someone you don’t think cares about you at all really does give a hoot about you in their (the new gender-neutral *their*) own weird way.