You can’t walk through the world without leaving a few footprints behind, and some of them last a lot longer than those snow-prints that finally melted away.
My words in this column are footprints like that. It’s always fun to meet someone who still remembers words I stomped into a story long ago.
Fun, yes. But sometimes a bit creepy.
Take the lady I met walking by Wildflower Lake several years ago who recognized me from my column’s photo. We chatted a while, and after telling me where she lived, she said, “And I know where you live.”
“You do?” I said, taken aback. Had she driven me home long-ago from a bleary party that required belated apologies?
“I do,” she said. “From that article you wrote about the trees.”
Ah, yes, the one about the ancient oaks behind my house. The builder had to guarantee not to remove any of them, so a numbered copper disk was nailed to each tree, and all had to be standing once construction was finished.
Perhaps foolishly, I had mentioned exactly which number stood right behind my house.
“I found those oaks,” the lady said. “And the one with that number. So I know where you live.”
“Um… OK… great!” I said. Or creeped-out words to that effect.
Fortunately, she was a nice, non-terrorist-type stalker lady, so it all came out OK. And I can’t say that I blame her for tracking me down, because I am also guilty of doing what she did.
About a year after I met that lady, my buddy Bill and I went to Ireland. We were scheduled to meet with Cormac MacConnell, an Irish columnist and novelist whom Bill knew through emails. Cormac offered to show us around if we ever made it to Ireland, so we arranged to meet at Bunratty Castle in County Clare, near where he lived.
We arrived early to the castle, so Bill said to me, “You know, Cormac writes so much about his own life, I’ll bet we could find his house on our own.”
“Really?” I said. “What do you know about him?”
“Well,” Bill said, “he lives in an old thatched-roof stone cottage on a quiet country lane with few homes on it. There’s an apple tree next to the cottage. I know the name of the church at the end of his lane, and the local pub he frequents. And the color and make of his car. And what his dog looks like. The dog’s name is Friday, and he always sleeps in the middle of the lane, so the neighbors call him Roundabout.”
“Hit it,” I said.
We found Cormac’s cottage in no time. Easy peasy. Turn right at the sleeping dog.
When we met Cormac, we told him how his writings led us to him.
Ah, yes, he said, acknowledging his role in our creepy clandestine caper. If he was weirded-out, he hid it well. Of course, we also came bearing gifts — his favorite whiskey and cigarettes, which we also learned from his column.
Footprints. So many footprints.
But if you think it’s only columnists who risk being stalked by the footprints they leave behind, think again. Especially if you’re someone who enjoys strolling through Facebook.
I know a young lady named Katie who learned that lesson recently.
Katie is a very well-educated, talented woman, currently between jobs as a freelance video producer, who has been sending her resume out in search of new work. But because hiring has been slow in that field, she expanded her resume to include other jobs she has done, including artistic work for a cake-and-cookie decorating franchise.
That did the trick. When she posted her new resume online, an HR manager thought it was the best she had seen in a long time, and they set up an interview.
And then, an hour later, the lady abruptly canceled the interview, having found something elsewhere in Katie’s social media that was “beyond reproach.” In a bad way, apparently.
Something, she said, about “a cookie of a bear and a football player.”
Ah, yes, Katie thought. That cookie.
It turns out that years ago a friend, knowing of her skills as a pastries decorator, had asked her to make a giant cookie for a raucous Bears vs. Packers party he was planning. He explained in detail how he wanted the cookie to show a bear “violating” a Packer in a way that I can’t describe here.
Katie won’t describe it either. Not in detail. In her words: “I will henceforth defend that the Packer is the center, hiking the ball to the Bear, who is the quarterback. So the cookie is, in fact, a depiction of peaceful unity between two warring teams.”
Yeah. Right.
In any case, Katie made the mistake of posting a picture of the cookie on Facebook just for her closest friends —but not for everyone in the whole Twittersphere.
Or at least that’s what she thought. Turns out she was a much better baker than a Facebooker, because that image went out there for anybody to see — including HR managers conducting interviews years later for jobs unrelated to Bears/Packers hijinks.
So a word of caution: We leave a lot of footprints out there in the world, and those of you strolling through Facebook might be surprised at the tracks that can still lead to you.
Not me, though. It’s bad enough with my column footprints—I want nothing to do with that whole Facebook folderol.
Anyway, if your stalking ever leads you to the oaks in my backyard, stop in for a cup of coffee. We can chat about Bears and Packers.
Bring your own cookie, though, because I don’t bake like that.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com
