LAST LAUGH

Snapped!

A sacrifice for the good of all mankind

BY LAUREN ROTH | ILLUSTRATION BY JOSHUA BOYDSTON

I

often wonder if the volumes of true crime books, podcasts and TV programs I consume have given me a proclivity for crime. I can’t resist the siren song of a complicated love triangle, a workplace embezzler, a smooth-talking Casanova who never seems to mention his four other families, or the otherwise devoted wife who can’t pass up a sale on antifreeze. I ponder what would make someone snap – my mind is color-coding a mental flowchart of everything the killer did wrong. Does that make me a criminal in training?

If and when I do finally snap, I hope that NBC’s beloved “Dateline” investigative journalist and narrator, Keith Morrison, will tell my story with his reassuring, grandfatherly tone, his lilting inflections and his vocal dismay as he lays out the twists and turns surrounding my case. Keith will paint a picture of me as the last person to harm someone else. “But ohhhhh, she did it, all right, and for reasons much darker and more twisted than an EF-5 moving north-northwest along the I-44 corridor,” he’ll softly croak.

As Keith Morrison meticulously unravels my story, he’ll probably wring his hands as he simultaneously asks, “How could she?” and “Can you really blame her?” Inevitably, he’ll unearth my long-hidden, carefully curated list of targets contributing to my “Night of Great Reckoning” – the night I finally snapped.

Spam Callers

If anyone has done more to deserve placement at the top of the list than those champions of persistence, spam callers, it has to be the deviant who conjured the fake-conversation robocall. Woe to the individual who has ever owned a car long enough for its warranty to near expiration, or the person who casually looked online to compare quotes for home, auto or medical insurance. With its humanlike voice, the robocall will find you and trap you deep within its database. “Go ahead,” the robocall scoffs. “Block my local prefix phone number. I’ll just come up with a new one before I call you tomorrow.”

Password Coders

The password coder insidiously seeps into our day-to-day lives to tell us we’ve entered an incorrect password. Only after you’ve jumped through a soul-killing succession of hoops will the password coder allow you access: Confess you’ve forgotten your password, enter two or three email accounts you might have used for your user ID, enter a temporary password, create a new password that will be rejected because it must contain at least eight characters, one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, one special character (but not a period or colon), and not a password you’ve used within the past 12 months or the word “password.” Why can’t password protocols be given up front? Because the password coder says they can’t, that’s why.

Baggage Carousel Huggers

If you’re one of the thousands of unenlightened passengers who insist on hovering within two feet of the airport’s baggage carousel as you wait for your luggage to come into view, it may surprise you to learn that you’re in everyone’s way. STEP AWAY FROM THE CONVEYOR, then let this notice be a warning. Step away or feature prominently on everyone else’s “Night of Great Reckoning” list.

A LEGACY OF FINE FURNITURE FOR 62 YEARS

Keven Calonkey Carl Professional Member ASID NCIDQ Certified