Tales From the Crypt... er, Couch

The Crash Test Dummy is hassling me for stories about all the loony people that visit me on a daily basis. (Edit: except they don't actually visit me. Go here for the explanation.) Where she gets off being so bossy has me a little puzzled. I don't even know her. I made the mistake a few weeks ago of signing up to "follow" her sad little blog, and now she's stalking me.

Which actually isn't anything new. Working, as I do, with people of questionable mental health (think The Office is fiction? You've never been to my workplace.), I've actually been stalked before, in real life. My first stalker was a passive-aggressive, extremely co-dependent woman, who developed an obsession with me, her co-worker.

One evening, she followed me home from work. And then she drove by my house several times a day for the next week, even when I wasn't home. One of my neighbors actually alerted me to this fact when he asked me if I'd noticed the white Toyota Camry that was frequenting our street. I asked if he noticed a license number. He said the number was obscured by a strip of duct tape.

Then packages began arriving in the mail, once per week, and the contents varied: on a week when she was happy with me, candy; the next week when she was angry, a dead mouse.

One Sunday she showed up at my church meetings. She sat in the overflow seating, and since my family sits in the middle of the chapel, I never would have noticed she was there except that a small child near her did a swan dive off his chair and landed on his head on the hard wood floor. The piercing screams that ensued turned many heads, including mine, and my eyes locked with the startled eyes of my stalker client. At that moment, all the puzzle pieces fell into place in my mind, and I gave her my best "you are sooo busted" grin and wink.

She quit working at my office soon after that. The white car wasn't seen again in my neighborhood. And I received one final package from her: a used messy diaper.