NSA, FBI, other spooks

Our grandson, Daniel, just posted a picture on Facebook that lets you push a button to find out the words and phrases that will flag the NSA that you are worthy of monitoring. Of course, by doing this you are automatically making yourself monitor-worthy. I was curious enough to push the button, but stopped my hand just in time to save myself a lot of grief.

Many moons ago, about 50 years or so, I believed that if you didn't have anything to hide, it didn't matter if you were watched, followed, phones bugged, searched or whatever. After all, we had nothing to hide. How naive was that?

We began to get clicking sounds and an echo on our phone. I was going to call the phone company, but one night about bedtime a neighbor called to say there was a man up on the telephone pole in the alley behind our house. I was amazed that the phone company could read my mind. I went out back to thank the repairman, but he clambered down and ran away. Maybe I looked scary in my robe and curlers.

A few days later, I was over at my friend Joanne's house, and she noticed a plain white sedan parked in front of her house, behind my car. Two men wearing snap-brim hats sat in the front seat. And sat. And sat. We laughed and said they must be gangsters or FBI, because we had seen movies and knew they wore those hats. It wasn't so funny when they followed me home.

Within a short time I wondered if I was still being followed, and I mentioned it to CJ. He had also noticed a strange white car showing up regularly. He was practicing criminal law at the time, so he knew quite a few police officers and mentioned our concerns to them. They frowned and took notes. He mentioned it to a couple of his criminal clients, who took more of an interest and started following the followers. Of course, then the police followed the clients.

I went out to lunch with my friend Betty Ann, and as I'm telling her these stories, two men at the next table seemed very interested. Their snap-brim hats were in the vacant chair beside them. I wrote a note that said "We know who you are and we know what you're doing." After showing it to her, I folded it and left it under the salt shaker as we left the diner.

Turns out the men were indeed FBI, who had a hunch that CJ was hiding a witness they needed, him being a criminal lawyer and all. I must have been guilty by implication too. My sassy note just made things worse. I was turned from a law and order citizen to a shady moll who had a sudden urge to rob a bank. Years later, I am still a bit suspicious of the government, and we all should be, a little.