My Revenge on the Newspaper Thief

I live in an old, 3 story apartment building along the beach on Puget Sound.  It's a nice old brick building with inside hallways, ivy on the outside, and stucco interiors.  My neighbors are generally nice, and many residents leave their hallway doors open when they are home as a general invitation to chat.  Most of the apartment buildings I’ve lived in didn’t feel like home.  This one does.  I suppose it’s not the building, but rather the people in it that make it feel like home.  I count many of them as friends.

Except for one.  One mean spirited weasel who is stealing my newspaper every few days.  The paperboy delivers inside our building hallways, leaving papers outside the doors of subscribers.  The weasel seems to pick on just a few of us and I seem to have made his list, probably because I am at the end of a hallway near the stairs.  That makes for a quick grab and getaway.  No one seems to know who he is, but I’ve got a plan.

Today I get home a bit early, and scoop up my paper on the way into my apartment.  I read the front and back leaf, then remove the guts and jam yesterday’s paper inside.  If I wait until I’ve read the whole thing to launch my scheme, he will probably take someone else’s paper.  Anyway he doesn’t exactly deserve today’s paper, does he?  Inside the front leaf I tape the end of a piece of tough nylon thread that’s reasonably close to the color of the hallway carpet.  I spool out about twenty-five feet, and make a masking tape flag at the other end.  The paper goes in the hall, with the attached thread leading under my door to the flag that I put on my computer desk.  I spend the next half hour merrily working on my computer, waiting for the fish to strike.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I am momentarily stunned when the flag zips across the floor and disappears under my door.  I race to the door, rip it open, and see the flag whipping down the stairs.  I can hear the guy running down the stairs ahead of me.  I race down the stairs after him, but he has too much of a head start and I lose track of the flag partway down.  When I reach the bottom floor I look down the hallway and see the flag zip under a door.  Incensed, I run down the hallway and pound on his door.  No answer.  I yell at the top of my lungs “I know who you are, &**%@$$.”

Next stop was the building super’s office, where I tell my tale of woe and ingenuity.

The weasel was evicted the following week. Oh, revenge is sweet.  Bwa ha ha ha ha!


In case you’re wondering, this is a 100% true story!