Smiles. We have been talking about smiles lately...as least I have. And the importance of a smile a day to keep the bogey-man away.

Well. Then there is this. You know I am honest. You know that I try to make you smile. To help you take a break from the zombie apocalypse. It is Halloween Season after all. The hour of Trick Or Treat is upon us. When tiny tots emerge as Ernie, or Ariel or as Dora, the fiendish troublemaker in Nemo. Knock knock. Who’s there...ooh, we say...aww...how sweet...how about a little treat?

However, these days, some folk seem to think that Halloween is celebrated EVERY day and they prank and trick and scare us all. Who are these nut cases dressed up in costumes scaring us all to death? Clowns roaming the streets in France. Sesame Street characters parading through NYC. It is difficult to separate reality from fiction. A trick on us for sure, and surely not a TREAT. Shame on you. Grown ups are supposed to shine a light on the path, keep the children from harm, and wait patiently on the sidewalk. And no sir, I may need glasses, but the beer can in your hand does not remotely resemble a UNICEF can, and no I do not have any spare change.

But I am here. I am here to help you stay the course. To keep your head in the right space. The right place. Where reality meets Never Ever Ever Land.

And I Never Ever Ever....

...can understand why, when I do something truly technologically brilliant, I end up in the middle of a police bust.

This is a true story.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The innocent would be ME and I cannot change my name, but I can tell you that if I was wearing my yellow wellies...I might have known better. Might have missed all the excitement. But as a true and accurate reporter, I must heretofore offer you the exact, true to life, Who and What and Where and When.

I have a new phone. I have limited usage...limited options...because I know better. I know that the more options, the more I am able to get myself in trouble. And if I limit my own limitations, I keep myself and YOU much much safer. So consider this a PDA...a Public Display of Affection. Do Not Do What I Do. Learn people, learn from my mistakes. The error of my ways.

All I wanted to do was to Show Off. To be a Technological Up-To-Date Whiz Kid. I wanted to send a photo with my text message. I am embarrassingly emotional with emoticons, possess oppositionally defiant opposable thumbs and tend to omit my SELF from my Selfies.

So there I sat, in the parking lot of the Quik Trip this afternoon and lovingly, tenderly and with a pure heart, tried to attach a photo to a text. A big jump into the deep end of the texting pool, for a Minnow like me.  I sat quietly in my car, with the windows rolled up and donned my swimming goggles. My very yellow, very mellow Minnow Mermaid swimming goggles. I struck a pose, aimed my phone at my face, and took a magnificent shot of the gas pump.

Oops.

All right then. Let's do that again.

Goggles. Yes. Camera Ready. Yup.

Click. Click. Click.

Ha! Got it. Well, not GREAT Ansel Adams picture perfect, but a reasonable facsimile of me.

Nope let’s see...  compose message...add funny comment...attach photo...hit Send!

Success!! Yes. Yes. Yes. I am a yellow goggled synchronized text and attachment sender. I have done swimmingly, so to speak.

I look up. Smile into the rearview mirror ready to give my very solitary and successful self a webbed swim glove high five...and instead...the flash of red lights...the Woo Woo Woo of sirens closing in...not one Patrol Car but seven...the Canine Unit on the ground... prowling dogs straining against their leashes for the scent of a perp.

Ask yourself, as I did, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

It was just a test...a texting test...an Emergency Broadcast Test of the Texting System. The National Everybody Knows More Than Me Texting Test.

And now...Oh No! I am surrounded by police cars. And I am sitting in my car in the Quik Trip parking lot wearing goggles. Yellow neon colored goggles in the middle of the day.

I throw up my gloved hands in surrender.

I resolve NEVER to do it again.

I am innocent.

I was just Trying.

Trying to be Technologically Gifted.

To be hip. To be cool.

And now I am going to be arrested.

An arresting development.

Oh dear me. O what have I done?

Oh.

Oops.

A bank robber.

They are looking for a bank robber.

Down the street. A snatch and grab.

He wasn’t wearing yellow neon swim goggles.

He was just looking for CASH.

They are not looking for ME.

They are looking for HIM !

Time to slowly put down the goggles and to back away....

Just back away....

Back away from the photos and the texting and the....

Maybe I should put my arms down...

Maybe I should rethink the surrender scenario and just go...

Home...

Pride surely doeth goeth before a Fall...

And I have fallen...and escaped...

Just in the nick of time...

Before I got nicked...

For wearing yellow goggles in the middle of the Quik Trip parking lot...

And texting...

I am not a Perp. I am a PERPetual over-my-head-out-of-my-depth-in-need-of-water-wings-to-keep-from-going-under, rotary phone afficionado sculling into the rising tide of technology.

So I bury my goggles in my gym bag, throw the car in reverse and back away slowly before the dogs get a whiff of the scent of an elderly not so proficient textee and sink their teeth into my thigh...

Are you smiling yet?

Giggling at my expense?

Well you should be, ‘cause I was.

The Minnow is Free!

And no one needs to know...

Ever...ever...ever...

Except You!

I...I am the Minnow...and outside the pool a complete and total innocent...

Emoticonally challenged and lacking the oppositional thumbs to text.

However, as I head for home, my fertile imagination generates what could have would have might have been....