CrossFire

"Guns don't kill people. BULLETS kill people."
--Chris Rock

"I made my wishes clear.
Uh-huh.
And if the Crazy Fairy were here, she could grant them."
--House

Oh for heaven's sake. Another day, another nutjob.

Again?

Seriously?

I've only written a half dozen columns this YEAR, and already the crazies are back. No sooner had the paper hit the stands this morning than some whack-a-do calls in and says (and this is a paraphrase), "I wanna leave a message for the person who writes Reality Truck..." wrapping up with, "tell her I'll show HER a GUN," and then something indecipherable, followed by his hope that we had Caller ID.

Why, as a matter of fact, we do.

Now, is that a threat? Maybe "showing me his gun" is a "euphemism."

He didn't say he planned to shoot me with it -- just show it to me.

Maybe he was kidding? This week's column WAS about how happy I was NOT to have accidentally shot my neighbor. His call was obviously a reference to that, but in what way? Is she a friend of his? For heaven's sake, I didn't even come CLOSE to shooting her!

Possibly, it was a joke... a prank...but anybody who knows my history knows stalkers with guns aren't funny.

Rob's question (since we had to disclose the call to him -- 'cause if there's anything your coworkers resent, it's Crossfire), was "what'd you say THIS time that'd get you shot?"

Nothing I can THINK of.

But after my unfortunate incarceration (of four hours) several years ago, where I got arrested on the say-so of a lunatic who'd stalked me for over a year, I always err on the side of over-informing every single person I know when the Unstables show up.

We didn't have blogs back then, or I would've been able to twitter the loon's vehicle and description to at least 43 people, every time I saw him.

I don't KNOW what the twitter-subscribers would DO with the info. In fact, when I click on them, usually it says their account has been "suspended for suspicious activity," but surely one or two would call the proper authorities if I was micro-blogging from, say, somebody's trunk.
This time around, I'm taking more precautions.

So, the guy's number is 494... OK, I'm not printing it here, but I DID give it to a LOT of people. And I bet they all even wrote it down. And if they wrote it on some selected restroom walls, well that's their biz. And sure, it's probably a throw-away phone anyway. I'm not NAIVE; I watched the Sopranos.

But I've ALSO seen CSI. I know they can find out stuff.

Last time, the whackjob stalked me, and somehow I was the one who ended up in cuffs. (And it was NOT a consensual, adult, all-in-good-clean-fun kinda thing either.)

Well, this time, I am NOT going BACK into that hole. Where they only have basic cable. And they make you sit in the front row.

And watch TNT Prime Time in the Daytime.