I Was Scammed By an Established Neighborhood Con Artist
By: Paul Taylor
Tags: Satire, Cats, Parenting, Covid Diaries, Scam

Mostly I’m just ashamed I let him get to my kids.

Photo by Francisco Moreno on Unsplash

Like many scams, this all started with seemingly innocent but unsolicited contact. I’m all about serendipity, and with the year we’ve all had, maybe I was the wrong kind of open.

It’s easy enough today to tell when to keep your more-than-usual distance. Being approached by an unmasked individual on the street is basically a terror attack in the Pandemic World, so I don’t know why I eschewed our usual strict boundaries that night.

When you’re with your children and slowly calculating the disease vectors for your household vs. a normal interaction, you need to be mindful of exactly where you draw the line. If your kids are about to step in front of a bus, you don’t use the “Sweetie, first time listening please” voice. You go full primal, there is danger, and it’s ok to scare them.

In month nine of a pandemic, if you’re braving a playground, on a trail and encounter an oncoming hiker, or stuck on a sidewalk where 6' is not attainable, you have to manage that. Manage it, and hope your kids remember very little of all of this. Screaming “DISTANCE” on every walk from your door to your car will not only cease to be effective as the pandemic and its accompany fatigue both wear on, but also cause its own lasting damage.

This means, when you make it back home, and somehow still find the unmasked individual from two blocks ago at your door while you help your son kick off his boots and hang up his jacket, it’s unsettling. Even though it will be akward in a moment when the door closes, solid cores and dead bolts should do the trick that social cues and mixed messaging did not.

So why are they in your kitchen? What just happened? Here’s the door, you need to leave. Kids, it’s ok, keep your distance, just please go upstairs and get ready for bed.

So now why are they on your couch? What is going on? This is abnormal even in a non-pandemic. Stay calm, it’s ok kiddos, we’re safe, if confused. Brush your teeth.

The night stretched incredulously onward. Dawn was greeted by the familiar angst that precedes. Everything just became a blur in our disrupted morning as we cleaned up the mess, boxed everything up and began to put it all behind us. That afternoon, with everyone still a little upset, it was weird to hear my daughter, at a distance and through a mask, tell this story as playground gossip.

In the accompanying COVID quiet of an empty park ringed by locked down homes, this was gossip the only other parent present could easily overhear. Oh God, this is all starting to well up again. It’s so fresh. It just happened.

You see them look over to you. You want to defend yourself but you feel that’s the wrong move.

Then, that fleeting moment of charity that is needed to break most tension arrives as the other parent simply says, “Oh, so you met Beau*? He’s followed us home before, too.”

I knew it seemed like this was all a little too easy for him. Chonker.

I don’t know why he did this, but I know why he got away with it.

*NOTE: Name changed to protect the marginally innocent. He’s chipped, so he’s home. I just doubt he’s learned his lesson.

I suppose that applies to me, too.