The one where I think I am being stalked

Last Wednesday evening, Erin and I took a run around the neighborhood. We do this fairly regularly, usually every Wednesday evening, and usually with Melissa as well, but due to a whole lot of random circumstances, it was just Erin and I.

We came to a spot on Firefox Drive where someone had written in sidewalk chalk on the sidewalk.

It wasn't your run-of-the-mill hopscotch board, or pretty, harmless little pictures like sunshine and rainbows.

No, it was a threatening message from a homeowner to whoever had let their dog leave his "marks" on the sidewalk and the yard in front of his house.

The message was something along the lines of "I'm looking for you and by golly I will find you and then I will give you a chocolate sundae. Just come knock on my door."

For clarification, "chocolate sundae" is a euphemism for what was actually written, which I would like to avoid putting in my blog in case there are impressionable young readers here.

At any rate, Erin and I kind of chuckled about it, boy that guy takes dog poop seriously, then went along our merry way.

Fast forward to tonight. We got home from a super-fun camping weekend (pictures to follow, including, if we can recover an accidentally deleted video from the FlipCam, Ben's smashing victory in the "pie" eating contest. You will not be disappointed.) and I decided to take Canada out for a run.

There was a slight, misting rain; but it was a nice night for a run.

As I turned the corner on Foxfire Drive, I noticed that Mr. Sidewalk Chalk had been busy. Anywhere a stray piece of dog poop had landed -- and there was a lot, apparently the dog in question had been busy too -- Mr. Chalk had circled each piece and written NO in giant letters next to each circle.

There were also a couple other messages like "STOP IT, bring a bag with you" and "You WILL get caught" and my personal favorite, "It's against the law to not pick it up! The fine is $75, If I catch u, you will pay a higher price"

The messages spanned about a quarter mile along the sidewalk.

Clearly, this guy meant business.

It was impossible not to notice it, but I didn't do much else other than read it and think, boy that guy is on a mission.

Fast forward to a few minutes later. I was running down one of the dead ends in our neighborhood, had come to the end, and was turning around. I noticed a sullen little boy that looked about nine years old, who seemed to be in a really bad mood, I thought perhaps it was because his parents had asked him to run some errand outside in the misting rain.

I noticed a guy on a bicycle riding really slow. I thought that was weird, most people don't ride bikes really slow, particularly if they are older than twelve. If you're riding for exercise, you obviously want to ride fast enough to get your heart rate up, and if you're riding for some other reason, especially in the rain, you probably have some kind of an end-goal, meaning you'd still probably ride with some marked purpose. This guy just seemed to be coasting.

Weird, but whatever. I kept on.

Fast forward again, to ten minutes later and the other side of the neighborhood. I had reached another dead end and was turning around again.

I spotted the same guy on the same bike riding at the same ridiculously slow speed.

I came to a realization.

This guy was following me.

My first thought was mild panic. This can't be good.

Then I thought it through and calmed down a bit. I mean, it was still broad daylight, I live in a busy subdivision, and I have a dog with me that I'm fairly certain would try to protect me in at least some mild fashion if I was in danger.

Then I thought maybe this guy was just some creep that liked to watch girls run.

I was rounding into the last loop that would lead me back home, when it dawned on me.

This was Mr. Sidewalk Chalk.

He must have seen me running by his house with my dog, and decided to follow me to see if I was the poop culprit.

That realization was at least a better alternative than Mr. Creepy Exercise Stalker and Mr. Creepy Abduction Stalker, so I'll admit I was relieved.

I finished my loop, and made my way back home. I relayed the story to Ben.

He was not pleased.

I'm gonna go find that guy and give him a chocolate sundae.


Ben, I don't think that's a very good idea. I mean, he was just following me to see if I was the one who let my dog poop all over his sidewalk. I don't think he meant to DO anything to me.


No, I think he already assumes you are that person and he was just following you to find out where you lived. Which he found out. 


Hmmm. Interesting point.


And this guy is clearly on the edge of sanity, what with all the threatening sidewalk messages, just imagine all the retaliation he might be planning. I don't want to wake up in the morning with dog poop smeared all over the front porch or anything.


After some thought, I admittedly agreed that I was a little concerned that now this guy had it in for me, seeing as how I was running past his house with a dog and without a poop-scooping bag.

To be clear, I just don't let Canada poop while we're running. If he looks like he's going to, I just yank him along. He holds it 'til we get home. Maybe that's mean, but I already hate having to strap things to my body like my iPod for music and the Droid for the MyTracks app, and I draw the line at strapping pooper-scooper bags to my person.

Anyway, back to the story. After stewing over the situation for a few minutes, I started to share Ben's fear that this guy totally had our address and was probably at that very minute working on a shrine in his basement with my picture and Canada's picture and all sorts of gruesome plans of how he was going to get back at us for allegedly defiling his yard.

Ben comes up with a plan.

I'm just gonna go talk to him.


Are you sure that's a good idea?


Well, I'm going to tell him that I don't like him following my wife around. And I'd rather face this situation head-on than wait until this guy completely loses his marbles and starts pipe-bombing our mailbox or something.


Well....okay. But I don't want you to get into trouble. Or get hurt.


To which Ben rolls his eyes at me and walks out the door.

He walked to the guy's house, which was pretty easy to identify what with all the chalk messages, particularly the one inviting the offender to come knock on the guy's door, and basically pointing to Mr. Sidewalk Chalk's front porch.

On the way, he snapped photos of the sidewalk messages. See Exhibit A, above.

He knocked on the door, and the guy answered. And said, "I'm the guy that was following your wife on my bike."

Ben said, "Yes."

Then the guy goes into this explanation that he just wanted to find out who was leaving the poop on his sidewalk and he wasn't trying to do anything threatening, and he just reacted when he saw someone with a dog run by his house. And he basically apologized and then Ben started talking to him about how to set up security cameras if he really wanted to catch this person, and they talked about the cost of cameras and where he should put them. Ben says he was really a passive guy, despite the seething anger he displayed in his sidewalk messages.

They chatted for about three minutes, and then Ben was on his way.

Disaster averted.