Due to circumstances beyond my control, a kid from my high school, it seems, thinks I'm stalking him. It started last summer when I approached him in the cafe where we both went daily. I saw him there so often that one day I smiled and said hello.
Days later, I passed him on the street. Our eyes met and he froze as if I were wielding a dead rabbit, then, in one Charlie Chaplinesque move, he swung around and pressed his face into a bookstore window. He was so clearly trying to avoid me, I was tempted to sidle right up to him and stare at the books too.
We had dozens of similar unfortunate run-ins, during which he seemed increasingly dismayed to see me, culminating in one terrible moment of shock and horror for both of us, when we both walked into the tennis pro shop and I realized that he had just moved into my neighborhood, and joined my tennis team.
Maybe this boy can simply sense that deep down there's a little stalker in me. I started in elementary school, calling a boy named Cory and hanging up when he answered. I did it so much, I still know his phone number by heart. Since Cory, I've gone through boy-friends' wallets and desks and even one journal where I read a rather disturbing entry about my "heinous obsession with chinese take-out and old-man music."
Thanks to the internet, stalking has changed a lot since grade school. The latest technology has made it easier, more instantly gratifying, and therefore more addictive than ever. With one click on that glorious little magnifying glass icon on our computer screens, life becomes as entertaining as reality TV while we learn seemingly everything there is to know about celebrities, the boss, the guy you're considering going out for cocktails with, that is if his MySpace page is creative enough and he doesn't have too many video games on his online shopping "Wish List."
I know one high-profile business man, a multimillionaire, who obsessively peruses another of his colleague's golf scores on a site for golfers, and an author who follows other writers' Amazon ratings like it's the Dow Jones.
As women, stalking is in our biological makeup. It's the latest manifestation of the whole hunter/gatherer thing. Women are, by nature, gatherers--of information too. It comes down to survival, but instead of peering into the next cave at who is dragging whom by the hair, we sit at our computer in the privacy of our home or office.
We stalk to get the facts we need. We stalk because we live in a society where we can't help but compare ourselves to everyone else all the time. I say stop feeling guilty about it. Everybody does it. It's simply impossible not to.
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