All psychopaths do it. They are good at it. They enjoy it.
This is what they look like while snooping.
Image Courtesy of PFFK #7; Vintage Leather Ottoman by Abercrombie & Kent
Big Ol’ Jet Airliner
OK, today’s story begins with a little girl on an airplane and ends with a lesson.
Air travel back in the mid-80s was more pleasant. At least when you are an adorable little girl, like in this picture.
Source: Me
My sister(?) is behind me just inside the chain link fence -- which I would say is pretty appropriate imagery. I think that is my Aunt Ju Ju laying down behind her. Because it is definitely not Hannibal Anne. Because I wouldn’t be smiling if it were.
I am at the newly dedicated swimming pool in Hansford county. You know, the one where I appeared in an ad on local TV for fundraising. And where my mom, Hannibal, got a job so she could start using her recently issued SSN and, maybe, change her identity or, just maybe, wipe out some past one? Just sayin’.
So, back to the story.
It’s the mid-1980s. I’m on a commercial aircraft flying from Dallas back to Amarillo then on to Hansford County. I’m looking out the window watching the Palo Duro Canyon roll by and begin to disappear in the distance. On either side of the canyon, you will see squares of land arranged like a checkerboard, some with perfectly round green circles.
Here is a picture from Google Earth.
Source: Google Earth
God’s Checkers
I remember looking out at this scene and imagining a giant game of checkers being played by the Gods, where the loser threw a milkshake and cookies across the board in frustration.
If this were a movie scene, it would go something like this.
INT -- COMMERCIAL AIRPLANE -- DAY
Mid-1980s. A 737 aircraft. Plush blue woven seat covers. We hear a constant wooshing sound as the aircraft is in flight.
An adorable little blonde-haired girl is sitting in a window seat looking out. This is LITTLE BLONDE GIRL. She is sitting on top of a small pillow, her legs are dangling down off the seat, not touching the floor. She’s wearing red converse sneakers and white sockletts. We see her blondie wavy curls as she stares out the window -- her face just touching the window, fogging up part of it as she breathes.
We reverse to see a close up of her clear blue eyes reflecting the view outside like on a tiny screen.
We shift to LITTLE BLONDE GIRL’s point of view. Looking 37,000 ft below us we see land arranged in what looks like God’s checkerboard. Most of the squares are brown, some green. Interspersed, we see green perfectly round checkers formed from the center-pivot irrigation systems.
Further off in the distance, we see a glaring, sandy, deep and undulating canyon system stretching as far as the eye can see from left to right as it disappears in the distance. That is Palo Duro Canyon. It looks like the loser of the game of checkers threw a milkshake and cookies over the board in frustration.
LOOKING DOWN AISLE AT LITTLE GIRL EYE LEVEL
We see a stewardess walking down the aisle from the front of the aircraft, as she approaches LITTLE BLONDE GIRL, she crops out on top and we can only see her legs and up to her hips as we are at eye level.
STEWARDESS stops and speaks to the little girl.
STEWARDESS
Hey sweety. We’re almost to Amarillo. Would you like a snack or a drink before we land?
LITTLE BLONDE GIRL
No, thank you. I’m OK. Are my parents going to be there when we land? I think I will be able to see them from the air.
STEWARDESS
I am sure they will be there. Who wouldn’t be there for such a sweet little girl like you?
Are you sure you don’t want a snack? We have ALL kinds!
LITTLE BLONDE GIRL
ALL kinds? Do you have any pretzels? I love pretzels.
STEWARDESS
Umm, let me look. [Fiddling through bag.] No, I don’t see any pretzels.
LITTLE BLONDE GIRL
Do you have any cheese curls? I love cheese curls.
STEWARDESS
Umm, let me look. No, I don’t see any cheese curls. We have M&Ms, Good N’ Plenty, Snickers bars. Raisins? Who would want raisins?
LITTLE BLONDE GIRL
No thank you, I don’t really like sweet things. Do you have any potato chips?
STEWARDESS
Why, yes. We have regular salted. We have ruffled. We have salt n’ vinegar. I don’t think you want those. We have Jalepeno. You definitely don’t want those.
LITTLE BLONDE GIRL
Ummm. Can I have some ruffled chips and a glass of water?
STEWARDESS
Sure can. I’ll come by and pick that up when you are done. Here let me help you fasten your seatbelt.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT -- SMALL COMMUTER AIRPLANE -- DAY
Present day. A small commuter aircraft with one aisle. Mid-flight. On the right side of the aisle, we see a row of two small cramped seats. On the left side, we see only a single set of seats. There is not even enough headroom in the aircraft to stand fully up. Forget about overhead storage!
We see the same LITTLE BLONDE GIRL -- now decades later as a grown woman. She is staring out the window at the same checkerboard pattern below and the same stunning Palo Duro Canyon.
Nothing seems changed by time, she thinks.
The plane jumps, rattles and clangs like a Vegas slot machine hitting the jackpot as we hit turbulence. A ding. A female voice says:
VOICE
The Captain has turned on the fasten seat-belt sign. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts.
As we are about to begin our descent, please place your seatbacks in their original upright position.
When we arrive, please collect any trash or other items in the seat backs in front of you and empty them in the bin at the front of the aircraft”
So much for modern air travel.
If this were a Martin Scorsese movie, the scene would abruptly vibrate and shake, then do a full 360º spin around, making everyone in the audience LITERALLY airsick and lose their popcorn. In order to convey the bumpiness of the ride, and all. Serious film-makers do that. Audiences just get nauseous.
And yes, I am referring to the 1991 Cape Fear movie with Robert De Niro. No, I did not like the “edgy” camera tricks. Lost my sea legs and almost lost my popcorn.
So much for modern air travel . . . and Scorsese movies.
Although, I will say the new Cape Fear series on Apple TV is good. I do think the Javier Badem was much better as Anton Chigur in No Country For Old Men. The single most dark and menacing character in any movie I have ever seen. Though he looked a lot taller in that movie.
Second Largest Ball of Sand
Fun Fact Alert #1: According to my extensive research on the Internet, Palo Duro Canyon is second largest canyon in the U.S. I couldn’t figure out what the largest one is.
The main river bed is called Prairie Dog Town Fork of Red River -- talk about a mouthful. It’s almost all sand with very little water. Sometimes when it rains, you will get run-off gushing through the river bed I guess the Prairie Dogs should have picked a better spot to set up their little town.
Along the river, there are probably a hundred other names of smaller creek beds, like Coyote Creek, Pleasant Creek, Bitter Creek, Potato Salad Creek, Uppa Creek, Creek by the Ocean, etc.
The Canyon rides on top of a narrow ridge with green shrubs and outgrowth highlighting the old creek and river beds.
Fun Fact Alert #2: Georgia “O’Queeffe” lived in the area in the 1916 - 1918 and painted a few pictures of the Canyon. Like these.
I guess Palo Duro Canyon looked different back in 1918. Because this looks like the insides of a horny-toad’s mouth.
Nevermind the Travelogue
OK. Back to the story.
And, no, this is not about air travel or scenery, as beautiful as it is, or about swimming pools. Or even Canyons. This is a story about flying in to Amarillo and setting up Hannibal’s AirPods because she allegedly wanted to listen to a music playlist that she (meaning I) was going to set up. The real purpose was to eavesdrop.
Listen, Do I Want to Know Your Secrets?
Answer: Yes. So say all the psychopaths. Snooping is one of their core skills. They are very good at it. They do it for a lot of reasons. They could be just gathering background information. Or looking to see what a real human does -- in order to copy it. Or they could be looking for blackmailable information. More likely, they would snoop to see if anyone is on to them.
Of course, they don’t consider it snooping. They believe everything in someone else’s possession -- including information -- really belongs to them, so they are entitled to take it.
Toucan-Totem
People who constantly snoop might be called Nosey Parkers. In the old days, they were also called “Sticky-Beaks”, as in “hey, don’t stick your beak in my business”.
If snooping psychos had a spirit totem animal, it would surely be a Toucan. Like in this picture.
Image Courtesy of PFFK #7; Toucan by Sergio Bustamante
Tortured Tales
The following is based on real events. Certain scenes and dialogue have been tortured, traumatized, or totally made up.
So, Hannibal Anne wanted AirPods, so she gets AirPods. She seemed a little more excited than usual. Like most tech things, setting them up is very simple yet also very difficult. So, she just makes others, typically me, set them up for her.
The AirPods were no different. She began calling often.
Hannibal Anne
“Hey, I want AirPods. Can you order them and charge to Fredo’s card? How soon will they get here?”
Me
“Sure, I’m ordering them for you now. You should have them in a few days.”
I ordered them from my account, I might add. I did not charge them to Fredo’s card.
A couple of days go by. Hannibal Anne rings me while I’m working in a place where I do work.
Hannibal Anne
“Can you track the AirPods? Can you fly in and set up for me?”
I track the AirPods while on the phone and tell Hannibal they should be arriving in the next 2 - 3 days.
Hannibal Anne
“Hey, when are you going to be in Amarillo next? [Your Nieces] really miss you. And, when you get here you can set up the AirPods. Apple has this new thing called Live Listen. I need that because my hearing is not so good these days.”
Hannibal wanted me to set up this new iPhone app that had just introduced called Live Listen. It was billed as an app to allow the user to hear conversations in noisy areas or help people with hearing aids actually hear. It acts like a mini-directional microphone. . . .
. . . It also allows you to hear a conversation near you iPhone from 30 ft away, even if you are in another room.
I book into flights to Amarillo.
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Waffle House
Pretty certain I‘ve mentioned before Amarillo isn’t always the easiest place to fly into. If you happen to take off, from DFW on time -- which never happens -- you might experience wind gusts approaching Amarillo strong enough to make the airplane scene spin around 360º. You know, like in a Scorsese movie?
Sometimes when the winds are too strong, the plane will get diverted to Lubbock. If that happened late at night, after the rental car joints shut down, you could be stuck in Lubbock overnight -- a mere 2 hours away from Amarillo with no way to get there.
And that, I must say, would be a bigger tragedy than a Bee Gees song, because there are no Waffle Houses in Lubbock.
On this trip, I made it to Amarillo without much bother. Hannibal Anne had the AirPods and her iPhone out on the kitchen island ready to be set up. She also had me do a two hour song list, in an exact order she had written out, to be uploaded to her iTunes account. This all took an afternoon to download, sync and set up to her satisfaction. I seriously should have put a ringer in there, like Cowboys From Hell by Pantera.
So, why again did Hannibal want AirPods? Why did she want Live Listen set up? I will tell you.
When Worlds Colitis
Hannibal had a years’ long routine of weekly Friday Night Dinner with her only two friends -- Floyd and Black-Eyed Malice (not their real names). They have had these weekly dinners since the 1990s. They would usually pick a table close to the restrooms, and Hannibal would often talk about her colitis flair ups, or some other ailment.
They roam from Macaroni Joes, to Public House, to Old Homeless Man Steak, then Abuelo’s “Mexican Food Embassy” -- it literally says that on the sign. I don’t think its really an embassy.
Occasionally, they go to Toscana Italian Steakhouse or Kabuki Romanza Japanese Steakhouse. Do not go to Kabuki! Unless you want to smell like sticky-shoed cooking oil for a week. Way worse than Chuck E. Cheese.
If it were up to me to pick the restaurant, I would go to Rudy’s and get some moist fat-topped juicy brisket, a side of “cold” slaw and a two ears of grilled corn-on-the-cob. Except Rudy’s is a drive through, so not technically a restaurant. They also sell apparel. And gift cards.
Tonight we are at Toscana, where the motto is “Pull up a seat, grab a ass” . . . whooops . . . I mean, “grab a glass!”
They also claim to merge classic cowboy cultures in order to bring the “iconic flavor of Italy & its cattle country to Amarillo”. I really don’t think any of that is a good idea. It might not even be legal.
Anyway, tonight we are at Toscana.
Here is a picture of the happy trio actually at Toscana’s (I think).
Hannibal is on the left.
The coast is, apparently, clear. No hair, no wheelchairs and no Down syndrome kids.
The only time Hannibal Anne would leave one of the Friday Night Dinners early, is if she found a hair in her tea. Or if someone in a wheelchair came into the restaurant. Or if a Down syndrome kid came in. She is cruel.
She and the Marm’s Marm -- appropriately named Karen -- have this wheelchair phobia in common and yet they both enjoy using handicap parking spots. OK, I know what you are thinking. If they have legitimate handicap parking permits, what is wrong with that? Nothing. Except, they don’t have handicap parking permits. What “winners” are they, you ask? Yes, you would be correct.
Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?
Mid-meal Hannibal Anne announces she is going to the “lady’s” room. Apparently, they allow ALL kinds to use it. (That’s no lady, that’s my mom!)
Her phone is out on the table and her AirPods have just been inserted in her ears. She begins to eavesdrop on her two friends conversation, via her iPhone on the table, as she crushes the cold hard toilet seat in the “lady’s” room. She is gone for awhile because she thoroughly enjoys violating people’s privacy. She loves it, even if she can’t gain blackmail level information. It’s really more of a sport.
When she finally returns, her friends comments that she was gone for a long time and they were beginning to get worried.
Hannibal Anne just said “well, you know, my colitis, I had a bad flare up.”
Hannibal Anne loves talking toilet talk during meals. She loves a good colitis chat and bonus points if she gets sympathy. It also puts other diners off their Pea & Fava Bean Salad. And, no, I will not say “with a nice Chianti”.
The friends were none the wiser that Hannibal Anne had heard every word of their conversation. She never let on. So, this would become a practice for years. They pity her poor colitis -- and other unmentionable stuff -- all while she is violating their privacy.
Diary Straights
In the late 1980s, Hannibal Anne gave me a birthday gift. It was a hard bound purple diary, with colorful jelly beans on the cover and a metal lock on the side. She instructed me that whenever something was a first time or when something major happened, I needed to write the date and detail the incident. She reminded me to keep the lock locked. So this was when I was in middle school in Hansford county.
So, when we moved to Amarillo and were unpacking at the barely dry drywalled house at #6 Accosted, I asked Hannibal Anne if she had seen my diary. She said she had not and she was sure it would turn up. It did.
One Saturday morning, after spending an hour getting ready to go out, I descended down the stairs to loud laughter. It was Hannibal Anne and my two siblings or half(?) siblings. You know, the ones who are all refusing to take DNA tests and acting quite defensive about it.
The three of them were circled around my diary as Hannibal Anne was reading it out loud.
Myron
“You are such an idiot. You measured the bruise on your leg when Fredo hit you with the golf club.”
Hannibal Anne
“Yeah, if you had a brain you would be dangerous.”
My sister(?) who regularly wets her pants when she laughs, did just that. It is sad, though. Whenever that happens, it reminds me of when my sister(?) was young, maybe 18 months old and just out of diapers. When she accidently peed her pants, Hannibal would take off her panties and pull them down over her head. That is one reason why I have not yet given my sister(?) a moniker. I do have one picked out, though, if that makes you feel any better. It does me.
Anyway, for the following weeks she would laugh, pee and bring up certain journal entries.
I just thought to myself “what fiends are they”? They can keep it, I figured. Maybe it will cheer them up. And maybe my sister(?) will learn to stop peeing when she laughs.
The Rifleman
Hannibal Anne is a bag rifler addict. If I, or anyone else, leaves their bag unattended in a car, at the #6 Accosted kitchen, a hotel room or a restaurant table, she rifles through their bag and their wallet. She especially likes if there is loose bills outside of the wallet. She takes them. She also lights up when she finds receipts that she can read.
Another favorite pass time is closet rifling. She absolutely loves a good dig through of a closet and any documents in a closet or desk. To this day, I have had documents go missing from my closet in #6 Accosted. Bank statements, medical receipts, phone bills, you name it. What she does with the documents? Where does she put them? I’m open to thoughts, please share.
None of her behavior is exclusive to me -- though I am “prolly” the main target.
Sabotage
Or, as Bugs Bunny would say, “sabotageee”.
This one is really snooping combined with sabotage -- one of their other core skills. I guess that would be “snoopotage” or maybe “sabo-snooping”.
It’s 2004 in Manhattan.
I was working, a lot, in Rockefeller Center for the company that lives there.
Hannibal Anne came for a visit, this happened more than too often. I had a backpack for work days and would leave my handbag at home. While I was at work, Hannibal Anne would go to Broadway plays, eat out and shop at Bergdorf Goodman and Ralph Lauren. When a black car would pick her up for her departure flight, she would toss any shoes she had worn during the trip, in the trash at Canal and Mercer. Every time.
A few days after Hannibal Anne left NYC and returned to Amarillo, I learned she took, or stole, something from my bag. My passport, it was gone. Given that I worked constantly, my handbag had not moved, only my backpack. It could have only been Hannibal Anne. If there is a psychopath, dark tetrad, mom lottery I have truly won the lottery.
Remember the NYC trips? They were frequent from 2003 to 2008. Just a few years ago, when I was organizing my own life, I found a spiral notebook. Inside I found Hannibal Anne’s handwriting. She had written down two IRA account number’s. Those two account numbers belonged to my ex and had been accumulating his earnings from being a trader. She had found the account numbers, while going through his desk at Mercer Street. I was, as a friend from Australia would say, shocked but not surprised.
One More for the Road
Remember I told you the story of my Grandmother’s 90th birthday party in an Episode called “Five Nights at Fredo’s“. Where we all had to get up early and drive to Spearman so we could all have Pizza Hut, for some unknown reason. And where I found out later that Myron had logged into a shared Website we used back then while sitting outside a funeral home near the local prison.
Why was Myron there?
To snoop. When we got back to Amarillo that night, I noticed my bag was in the wrong place, my closet door was open when I know I closed it and a dresser drawer was closed, when I typically leave them open a crack, because . . .
To Catch a Snoop
. . . set a trap.
Here is a true story that happened in April 2021 when I was at my Grandmother’s. I thought I had seen Hannibal’s black pickup in town. So, I propped a paper clip against the bottom of the closet door where I put my bags and other things, and went out.
Sure enough, when I got back, the paper clip was flat on the ground and I could see footprints from medium sized flats imprinted in the carpet floor. The footprints went from the closet, around the bed, to a set of documents and binders I had on a small chair in the corner.
Did I mention that Hannibal wears flats?
In this case, I don’t think it was Hannibal. I do, however, have a pretty good idea who it was.
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