Transmission

A couple of months ago I turned on the receiver part of our baby monitor so I could listen in on the kids as they played in their room. After a few minutes of silence I suddenly heard a woman's voice come through the monitor asking "..help clean up these toys?'

I turned, looked at Lauren, who was standing in the same room with me and she had the same What the Hell expression on her face as I did on mine. Who was asking Maxfield and Wyatt to clean up the toys? I walked into their room and they were playing nicely. There was no woman in the room with them. I looked at the transmitter part on the baby monitor and it was turned off, which was weird because we leave the transmitter on all the time. One of the kids must have been playing with it and turned it off. I realized since our transmitter was off, our receiver was picking up the signal from another baby monitor somewhere. It was most likely the family a few houses away.

I explained my theory to Lauren and she agreed that was the most likely explanation. She then made a joke that the family a few houses away was probably picking up on some of our family noises. Like I said, we leave the transmitter on all the time. I am sure we have been broadcasting our lives to the neighborhood. I felt weird about that for a bit until I realized that all anyone probably ever heard was the kids screaming or me screaming at the kids. No big deal since I am sure our neighbors would hear us even without a monitor.

But the fact that there is the potential that someone, at any given time, could be listening in our house has given me a great idea. You see, now sometimes, when I walk by the baby monitor transmitter and no one is around, I just say random things like, "I hope I don't get abducted by aliens AGAIN tonight." Or "I really need to by a better set of binoculars to spy on my neighbors." And "How did John Wayne Gacy do it? I can only fit two or three in the crawlspace."

When I have a little bit more time I try subliminal messages. I will repeat over and over again,
"Send money to (and I say my address." Or "This is your guardian angel and you need points with God. Go and clean the gutters at (and I say my address)."




Do you have any suggestions of what I could say? Keep it clean Anonymous.

Secret Porn Name

When I get into a book I often times find myself overcome by the characters or the mood of the book. I also do this with movies or television series. In normal everyday situations I end up thinking to myself “What would Lou Boltd do?” Or I ask myself “Would I rather be Swearengen or would I want to be Bullock?” both characters from the HBO series Deadwood. (I am just finishing the first season).

I am also captured by the situations in the stories. I can’t help but think about what I would do if I was caught in the middle of an international espionage ring. How would I get a message to my family if I was kidnapped? I play these dilemmas over and over in my head until I move onto the next book or television series and ask myself different questions.

Recently I have been reading a bunch of Harlan Coben books. Harlan Coben writes mystery/thrillers. I was lucky enough to discover his books just a few months ago and a friend has lent me several of his works. I do not devour books. I am a slow reader. It usually takes me a week or two to finish a book. So, I, more or less, snack on them. And using the comparison of snacks I would rate Harlan Coben’s stories like a bag of Ranch flavored Doritos. Not my favorite flavor, but still Doritos, and I can finish a bag (or book) in just a few days.

The one I most recently read was “Tell No One”. Basically a guy thinks his wife is dead but then he starts getting mysterious emails containing information only his wife would know. One of the bits of secret information was that his wife was using an alias and the name she was using was that of her middle name and the street she grew up on. She took her middle name as her first name and her hometown street name as her last name. And of course her husband knew this and of course finds her eventually.

A few nights ago I was in bed watching 48 Hours Mystery. Lauren was asleep next to me. 48 Hours is basically a show about murder and who done it and how did they do it etc. etc. I forget the actual case because they run 48 Hours marathons on cable all the time and I get confused, but a woman went missing and they were trying to find her. There was a ransom demand and the police wanted to make sure that the woman was still alive and asked a question that only the woman would know.

I forget the details because I immediately had to wake Lauren so we could come up with a secret code word in the event she ever witnessed a horrible crime committed by the KGB and had to go into hiding and she needed to contact me.

“Lauren, wake up.”

“What?”

“If you ever need to use a secret name to get into contact with me, I want you to use Andrea Carlson.”

“You want me to use my stripper name?” she said referring to the various “Name Generator” types of websites, using her middle name and street name.

“Yes.”

“You woke me up for that?”

“Yes. I just want to make sure we are on the same page.”

The next day, after I put some thought into it, I realized that the KGB or rogue CIA agents would probably know her middle name and street name. So we needed to come up with a different plan.

“I think we need to change your secret code name.” I told her the next morning over coffee. “What was the name of your first pet? Was it B.C.?”

“No. My first pet’s name was Miss Catsky.” She said. "So now you want me to use my porn star name?”

“Your porn name is Miss Catsky Carlson? I think I like that.”