My first job out of college was as a research analyst (I always knew my first job would have the word ‘anal’ in it) with an IT database company in Bethesda, Maryland. My job consisted of phone research (cold calling) and Internet research (stalking the absolute shit out of IT decision makers online). Yes. This makes me a terrifying ex.
Despite only lasting 14 months as a research analyst, my stalking skills have come in handy more than a few times. As a side note, I was also very good at hacking into Avaya voicemails, but with Avaya no longer in business, I’m probably not impressing anyone with this information.
One of the times my stalking skills came in handy was in 2016 when my friend Leah wanted to to set me up with her supervisor at Booz Allen. So I decided to crash one of her work parties and tried to keep an open mind.
Things were going pretty smoothly, and though I can’t remember how, I brought up that Scary Movie 3 is one of my favorite movies. At least top 10, I told him.
“That makes ZERO sense,” he told me. “What is it, like 1) Casablanca 2) Forrest Gump 3) Scary Movie 3?!.”
“Have you even seen Scary Movie 3?”
“No. But I don’t need to see it in order to know that it doesn’t belong on anyone’s top 10 movie list.”
“I’m going to mail you a copy. Not my copy because I need. But I’m going to mail you a copy.”
And that’s exactly what I tried to do the next Monday at work. Not because I’m quirky and flirty and super interested in the guy, but because I’m just that passionate about Scary Movie 3.
But my online stalking skills prove useless at finding his home address, and he works for a government contractor so I can’t just be mailing movies to his office. So I did the next best thing I could think to do–find his parent’s address through property tax records and send it there.
For the record, all my guy friends thought this was a TERRIBLE idea. But in my mind, I believe this is the modern day equivalent of me trying to find someone who is going to match my freak.
So the movie arrives.
Leah gives him my phone number in case he wants to thank me. Or you know. Start the restraining order process.
He does neither.
But he shows up to my stand up comedy debut. At this point I’m thinking I’m 1 for 1 on sending a spoof horror movie to a guy’s parents house. I make a mental note to write a blog post about it and think of how easy it’s going to be to buy this guy an anniversary present for the next four years (there are five Scary Movies after all).
But then something interesting happens.
NOTHING.
I guess I’m 0 for 1 on sending spoof horror movies to a guy’s parent’s house. And do you wanna know the worst part? I realized afterwards the fucking movie was on Netflix.
