I Should Know Soon if "The Authorities" Snoop in My Email

People who belong in padded cells have long believed that the CIA, FBI, or any other agency of so-called "intelligence" have special bureaus and agents who exist for the sole purpose of invading their privacy--wiretapping their phones, opening their snail mail, reading their emails, etc.  (This type of thinking has often led me to believe that paranoia is a manifestation of narcissism.  My dad told me that a paranoid person is someone watching a football game on TV who thinks the players in the huddle are talking about him.)

Well, if anyone is reading my email, I'll know about it really soon.  I've exchanged some in the last week that you could construe as cryptic.

First, a little background.  If you read the fourth paragraph of this entry, from the time when LiveJournal hosted this blog, you'll read about when I purchased Penguin, the dehumidifier, at Target, when Steph complained of how dry the bedroom was.  It was obviously designed for a child's room, but it was cheaper than the "adult" models.  (The other choice of children's model was an elephant, and the last Republican I would have voted for was assassinated in 1865.)  Here's a picture of Penguin:

Christmas night, my friend Steve's stepdaughter Ramona (Susie's first babysitter) posted on Facebook that she had tipped over her dehumidifier and broken it.  I replied to her one-to-one by offering to loan her Penguin.  Steve, Susie, and I were going to see Santa Claus Conquers the Martians with Fritz the Nite Owl that night, so I told her I'd send Penguin back with him after the movie.  She was open to this, and thanked me effusively.

Ramona and her baby daughter went back to Kentucky soon after New Year's, so I emailed Steve to ask him to send Penguin home with Susie after choir practice, on one of the nights I was working at Columbus State's bookstore and wouldn't be with her.  Sure, no problem, he said.  She caught a ride with the mom of one of her fellow Rising Voices.

When I opened the bag, Penguin didn't have a head--like Wednesday Addams' Marie Antoinette doll.  This was important, because the steam came from a little hole in his beak.  (Our dear, departed feline David could stare Penguin down indefinitely--you almost wanted to cue up Hugo Montenegro's theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when you saw this--but he would be laid low whenever Penguin blasted a little steam in his face.)

I emailed Steve, saying that "I looked in the bag Susie brought home, and all that was there was Penguin's body.  Would you look around your car and see if his head is still in there?"

He replied that Penguin's body was intact when he returned Susie's bag to her.  Maybe the head was in the other car she rode in that night.

So, Saturday before church, I emailed the mother who drove Susie home from choir practice that night.  She's a good friend, and I was happy she was willing to drive out of her way to get Susie home safely.  So I knew I could trust her when I asked her to check her car to see if there was a disembodied head loose in her car anywhere.  If so, could she bring it back to us?  We had the rest of the body at our house.

After church yesterday, the mother reassured Susie that yes, she would bring Penguin's head to choir practice tomorrow.  (On a silver platter?  See Matthew 14:6-11.)

How many Keystone Kops with far too much free time have been wearing down shoe leather and going without donuts trying to figure out who "Penguin" represents?  Has to be a code word for a yet-undiscovered murder victim, doesn't it?

P.S.--Abstained from food and drink (except water) since 9 p.m. last night and went to the doc this morning for the blood draw.  They filled up a test tube and dispatched it to Riverside Hospital's lab.  Now I wait for a phone call from my doctor once the results return.