Be afraid, ladies. Be very afraid.

This morning a friend shared one of those damsel in distress stories that pop up on Facebook every so often. They're always in the first person and are ostensibly meant to serve as a warning to women, young and old, about the possible existence of a criminal or pervert, some sleazoid who had stalked the narrator.

I tend to turn very skeptical when I hear these stories, usually because they always end with a rather breathless equivalent of "thank goodness I'm okay but what a narrow escape it was!!" There's always a lack of specificity. You know, a generic older man instead of "a fat guy with a plaid Kromer and Carhartt jacket." No matter how traumatized you may feel, if something disturbing happens to you there's going to be some specific detail that will narrow the suspect pool down from just "men."

They're also generally highly illogical.  One circulated last fall where a woman was supposedly stalked by a guy in car from Munising to Harvey, a fairly lengthy stretch of road. It is not a densely populated stretch of highway, but it's also not totally empty. Supposedly this person could see into the dude's car with her rear view mirror. She could tell it was a man she had seen at a gas station just before she got back on the highway. Here's a challenge: try seeing how much you can tell about someone driving a car behind you if they're more than a car length or two back. Answer: not much.

Now here's another challenge. See how much you can tell about the driver of a car if you're in a vehicle behind them. Part of her "I was so terrified" post was speculation that he could tell from seeing her car from behind that she was (a) female, (b) young, and (c) alone. Because I'm moderately curious, after seeing that post I tried doing it. You know what you can see in most cars when you're behind them? The backs of headrests. Unless someone is exceptionally tall, at most you might get a vague impression someone is wearing a hat. Gender? Total mystery unless you pull up right alongside the car. How many people in the car? Also a mystery unless you pull up alongside them.

In any case, whether or not the story was believable, she supposedly first noticed the car before she got to Christmas but it never occurred to her to pull into any of the numerous businesses in Christmas (casino, gas station, a couple of restaurants, a flea market). The one piece of advice that gets given to anyone who thinks someone in a car is stalking them is to go to the first place you see that has lots of people around and call the police from there. Our heroine, the narrator, instead stays in her car and continues driving for another 40+ miles. Holy wah. Did she not have even two brain cells to rub together?

This morning's damsel in distress story was similar, but on a smaller stage. Instead of miles of M-28, it's hundreds of feet of aisles at a Walmart. She'd gone to Walmart to pick up a prescription for her mother, went to use the restroom at the back of the store because the one right in front was busy, and then after emerging from the restroom noticed a man who appeared to be following her. So instead of marching straight up to the service desk and asking for a manager she does a bizarre jogging through the store, switching up and down different aisles and still seeing the guy. Finally, she spoke to an associate. She described the guy, police were called, surveillance tape examined, and no one appeared on the tape who was dressed the way she described. There was a man who did appear in the same area of the store as her a few times, but she wasn't sure it was him.

Okay, ladies, first the stupid it burns part. She had already said the store was busy, so why was she so paranoid and fearful? If the rest room up front had a line, you know the store is full of customers. Even if the guy was a creeper what was he going to do with hundreds of shoppers in the building? What was the point of dashing around the store like she was playing Spy vs. Spy? Did she think he was going to try to have his way with her on one of those hideously uncomfortable metal benches salted through the store? Did she believe he was just waiting for the right moment to cop a feel? Or was he eyeballing her purse and waiting for her to do something dumb like leave it in her cart and then turn her back so he could snatch it? So why not just bluntly ask the dude why he's following her? Do it loudly to ensure other people turn and look so there are multiple witnesses. Worst case scenario?  Mild embarrassment, but you know the guy is now going to take his cart and amble as far away as he can for the rest of his Walmart experience.

This is, incidentally, the advice people who deal with issues like creepers on a regular basis give and too often we women ignore. Make a scene. We women are socially conditioned to be nice, to be quiet, to just let men get away with their bad behavior. Creepers and other sleazoids don't expect us to speak up when they play grab ass in the workplace or at parties, they still think that no matter how skeezy their behavior is we'll just smile, try to edge discreetly away, and let the shit weasel continue being a shit weasel. When someone keeps slithering up to you in a public place and making you nervous, just tell the wank nozzle to go spread his slime trail someplace else. You may get called a cunt or a bitch or some other supposedly derogatory term, but that's better than being made so nervous that you panic and reach for the pepper spray.

Granted, some of the shit weasels probably deserve to be pepper sprayed but why bother if words will work?

For what it's worth, there must be some sort of collective angst about shopping at Walmart because an Internet search turned up a lot of stories similar to this one. In every case where the police were actually called, authorities found no evidence of any nefarious intent. Stores are laid out to encourage shoppers to travel in certain directions so seeing the same people repeatedly in different parts of the store is totally normal. Personally, if I had suspicions about some dude at Walmart I wouldn't head into hardware; I'd aim for needle crafts or ladies' lingerie, areas where men normally do not venture. If the creeper turns up in the women's panties aisle then, yep, maybe he really is up to no good.

Also for what it's worth, occasionally there are legitimate warnings on social media. A local page had a post the other day about a possible shit weasel to watch out for. A man hired to shovel snow off roofs appeared to be scoping out other houses in the neighborhood and was using the old "can I make a phone call?" ploy to try to get a look inside people's homes. In that case, the poster gave very specific details including a name and photo. She had checked with the man the sketchy guy said he worked for, then Googled the dude's name and found his mug shot. Turned out the dude had recently been released from jail after serving time for burglary, so, yes, that was definitely a neighborhood watch type of posting worth passing along.