Notes

Today, let us consider the mysterious power of notes. Notes, a seemingly innocuous topic, and also a seemingly boring topic until you think about some of the strange, even unintentionally hilarious, notes you've read in your lifetime. Yes, think of that random scribbled note your mom left behind for you to read when you got home that made little to no sense, think of those unexpected notes in unexpected locations, like that time your brother left that giant note on the washing machine door, or think of that utterly confusing note that someone with very little English skills left on your windshield in a McDonald's parking lot. (Yes, these are all things that have happened to me. But I'm sure you too have had these disconcerting experiences.)
Particularly disconcerting was a note I read recently, left behind by a girl I judged to be totally normal whose dog I am currently petsitting. I arrived at her house for the first day of the job and was greeted by this gem, scribbled in faded sharpie:

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"If my ex-boyfriend Gino comes to the door while you're here just call the cops. This is your only option.

[insert long wiggly line]

911"

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...
I repeat.
...
WHAT THE HECK?!
There are so many things wrong with this note.
One, the fact that it was even left! I met this person before starting pet sitting, and she failed to mention her potentially extremely aggressive ex at this time?! Muh... bluh... wuh! There are no words.
Two, she felt the need to include the number I ought to call? The first problem I had was an insult to my safety, but this is just an insult to my intelligence. I mean, I guess what's more concerning is that there must be people out there who wouldn't think to dial 911, and when the murderous ex came to the door they would just pull out their cellphone and think oh my god what's the number for the cops?! Who tells me to call the cops and doesn't, like, leave their number???
Three, clearly this was a complete afterthought. Like, scribbled in a barely-working sharpie on a scrap of used paper? Seriously, she must have been leaving out the door and been like whoa wait, maybe I should warn her about how a guy might come by and try to attack the house. Hmmm...should I? ...yeah, I guess so.
So seriously, I think this note fulfills both the descriptors of "mysterious" and "powerful." The leaver of the note can take absolutely no responsibility, and leave as much of a burden as they want! Not only that, but we are left to imagine... what the hell would Gino try to do? I don't even want to know.

Another note I feel the need to share with you all due to its hilarity is the aforementioned windshield note left at a McDonald's. I will unashamedly tell you I was parked extremely poorly in this particular parking lot, and so I would not have been at all surprised if the note said something like "Don't park so crappily, please, for all of us." But it was instead something much more cryptic.

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"Please don't park so close next time, so its gets me exited :)"

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This note mostly just seems creepy. We really have no way of knowing whether this note is passive-aggressively angry, or if they have some kind of fetish for narrow parking. If it had just cut off at "Please don't park so close next time" I would have understood completely what it meant. However, we have the strangely tagged on portion that is highly questionable. One can't help but wonder, after they process the smiley face... did he mean "gets me excited"? o_O
In the end, I decided that this was probably just left by a well-meaning kindly Russian immigrant who meant to try to both be friendly and reprimanding. Or at least I hope that was the case.

So next time you leave a note in a hurry, remember: someone is either laughing at it later, or wondering whether you are a total creeper.

Hoping you're not a creeper,

Sarah