Saturday, September 16, 2006

Probably a nice guy

I know I said yesterday that I would tell you about our adoption experience but I have something else that is weighing on me right now. Our youngest is 12, and plays football for a local req team. He has a blast and for the most part all of the players parents are pretty "normal", meaning they don't shoot at the ref's or spew obscenities at the opposing team. Today there was a guy there, walking back and forth along the sidelines with the biggest ass camera and lens I have ever seen. I didn't recognize him as a regular and asked a few folks who he was.....as it turns out, he doesn't have a kid playing, in fact he doesn't have a kid. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Okay, okay, he probably IS just a nice guy that likes sports but what is he doing taking photos of 12 year old boys, THAT HE IS NOT RELATED TO in any way. Being the mother hen that I am, I asked him, very nicely of course, what he was doing. He said he likes to "help" out the teams with pictures of the plays which he posts on a "secure" site for us to look at. Okay, maybe thats true but nobody asked him to do this as far as I could find out. There is something about the guy that really gives me the willies. He was pleasant enough and didn't seem threatened by my asking him who he was but I still got the creeps. There was a part of me that wanted to follow him home, confiscate his hard drive and see if he is a pedophile. Extreme you say? well my gut is usually dead on when it comes to creepiness. If there was a stereotype for creepy this guy would fit....fat, bald, short, minimal eye contact and just an air about him that I can't put into words. Hubby has some well placed law enforcement connections but said it is against the law for any police agency to go "checking out" anyone just because someone wants them too...apparently the guy has to actually do something before anyone can find out. Maybe I can get the head of Hewlett Packard to tap his phones ;)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You should have told him that some people do not want their kids pictures all over the internet and you would appreciate it if he didn't take any more. My DIL would have had a fit over that. She won't even allow me to put up any pictures of my grandkids.

That guy has some nerve!

Kellie said...

Was this a school event? If it was - I would ask anyone and every school authority if they authorized that. You can't just go and take pictures of other people's children and post them online without the parents permission. I just had to sign a permission slip for the band teacher to take photos of my daughter in the high school band playing at football events.

People are weird and you can never be too careful. There was an article not too long ago in our local paper about a man in prison that found and tracked down a high school girls basketball player by seeing her number on her shirt. Just from innocent information listed in the newspaper the convict was able to get her full name, knew where she went to school, and had her address and phone number by calling information. Scary stuff.

I may be paranoid but you have to go with your gut. Creepy is creepy.