Calling Attention To Yourself

I have a friend who enjoys his pot. Now, I've never been one to partake, but I'm also not about to get noble and start preaching to him about the dangers of drug use. He's 28, he can do what he pleases. However, I am very concerned that he is going to be arrested due to the procedures he described to me for when he goes to buy his illegal materials. Apparently he and his dealer meet in a neutral location, he gets out of his car, goes into the dealer's car, pays, quickly exits the dealer's car, gets back into his own vehicle and drives away. The entire thing takes four minutes. On the surface, it sounds fairly straightforward. But, the other day I was pumping my gas when I saw two men do exactly this maneuver behind the station. Do you want to know what the first thing I thought was? "Hey, I bet that guy is buying drugs from the other guy. At the very least they are doing something illegal." And if I, a person who is usually oblivious to this kind of thing, noticed it then it is a safe bet any cops in the area noticed it as well. Basically, by trying to be slick all this duo actually managed to do was call more attention to themselves. They say the best place to hide is in plain sight. I don't know if that is true, but I'm willing to bet it works a hell of a lot better than acting like you're anticipating a raid from the DEA.

The reason this is fresh in my mind is because the other day I was waiting to take a train into Boston. While standing around the station, I took stock of the people I would be travelling with. (After all, we're at an Orange Alert. I think. We could be Yellow. Who knows?) Of the thirty people around me, I would estimate that twenty-seven of them had their heads down, scrolling through their phone or feverishly typing away at some text message. You know typical, anti-social traveller stuff. But there was one guy in the corner who caught my eye as he feverishly texted into his jacket. He obviously had a cell phone in there, but didn't want it to be seen. He would type a few words, then look up and around the room before returning to his phone, all the while keeping the phone hidden from prying eyes. But by trying very hard to not stick out and look nonchalant, the guy ended up doing the exact opposite. Now I couldn't take my eyes off him. Of course, all his self-security measures were completely unnecessary. First off, I highly doubt what he was typing was nearly that interesting. From the looks of him, he was most likely texting a co-worker about the lunch plans for an upcoming meeting versus some juicy gossip or secret plan for world domination. Not exactly the kind of stuff paparazzi would pay a bundle to get their hands on.

But more importantly, keeping your phone in your jacket is the worst way to discreetly text. Because now I just want to know either what the messages are or what makes your phone so damn special that you don't want the rest of us to see it. It can't just be an iPhone, because everyone has one of those now. They practically give them away, so hiding one just makes you an idiot. Was it a prototype of some new phone, or was it so old the guy was embarrassed to still be using it? Now I needed to know, so I started staring at him. Eventually it turned out to just be a normal Blackberry. Very anti-climactic. My point is the entire thing could have been avoided if he just acted like a normal human and not like the person on the other end of the line was Jason Bourne. (Although I will say this: it was strangely comforting that he was this bad at blending in. You'd have to think someone actually up to no good would have thought it through and gone unnoticed.) I think at the end of the day the best advice I can give you is this: if you have some business that you don't want a lot of people to see, you should probably do it in private.