I have always been a bit of a paranoid person.  I don’t walk the dog alone at night, I sleep with 100 night lights in the house and the alarm is set to stun and kill.   I bring brownies to the local police when my husband travels and I need an extra bit of comfort with a late night drive by.  Criminal Minds has heightened my fears and I look at all people, vehicles and buildings as crime scenes waiting to happen.

The other morning I was going to the gym at my usual early morning time.  As I pulled into the parking lot, off in the corner was a lone parked paneled white van…serial killer van.  I booked it into the gym and mentioned it to my friend Terri who immediately said, “Criminal Minds van”.

“Yes!”, I said and we proceeded to talk about other situations that remind us of Criminal Minds. The list is long.

Criminal Minds is a great television show that obviously has a tremendous following. I wonder if it is mostly men or women?  Do men get a rise of the hair on the back of their neck when they pass an odd person walking their dog, park next to old van with tinted windows or hear sounds outside their bedroom door?

Yesterday morning I went to Starbuck’s at 5:30am before driving down into Westchester.  It was eerily quiet and dark and with the pending construction, sections of the walk were blocked from full view.  I parked as close as I could and walked with as much of a New York City walk as I could muster. I felt safer in midtown Manhattan than this dark parking lot. My heart was pounding and it was not from the Venti, extra shot non-fat Latte.

Later that morning at the Thruway rest stop I was walking towards the door when from behind the pillar stepped, no lie, a man with a lazy eye and a cane creeping along the side of the building. The van parked perilously close to Gerta, my car.  No Fredrick today.  If I wasn’t so taken aback, I would have laughed.  He smiled in an odd way and left.  Dodged another bullet.

I won’t comment on the parking garage or the creepy stairwell but thank God for Donald, my commuting partner.  He braves the way.  When I left his house to drive home last night, I locked the doors and hit the high beams and tried not to let my mind wander to what may be hiding in those hills. Bunkers with kidnapped women? Men making scrapbooks from the victims they gathered in those woods? Ooo, too many thoughts to  process. I think I’ll enjoy the views of the pumpkins and mountains in the back drop.

Why don’t the serial killers look like Christian Grey, Tom Selleck or Hugh Jackman? You’d think they would have a better chance of getting a woman into the shadows. No limp, twitch or sketchy rash…

Amelia and I will continue to watch Criminal Minds and I’ll make sure my pepper spray is locked and loaded.