by Stephen Thompson

You know that creepy old codger who lives alone at the end of your street, hates kids, and has fifteen feral cats lounging under his dilapidated porch? Guess what he has in common with that skinny kid from your old high school who played JV soccer team and really liked Nirvana. Any idea? They’re both international terrorist murderers.

Last week the front page of almost every major newspaper ran a story about a 91 year old retired auto mechanic in Ohio who was just found guilty in Germany for the deaths of almost 30,000 Jews during his time as a prison guard in a Polish concentration camp in WWII. This quiet, unassuming grandfather was allegedly responsible for running the camp’s gas chamber, proof once more that most of the old people you see over the course of your day minding their own business are probably guilty of some horrible crime.

Right next to the article about geriatric Hitler was a story about an equally surprising mass murderer. Apparently the head of Al Qaida in Somalia is this guy who was raised in Alabama with a totally normal upbringing- his picture from Prom shows an ordinary young dude arm in arm with a cute blonde date. It’s easy to imagine the photo was taken an hour before the customary high school make out session in the parking lot of a Sonic. Now that kid is responsible for running an entire terrorist network in West Africa. My first thought was to wonder what his old prom date thinks about all this. I bet whenever the subject of prom is raised at the dinner table on girl’s night out one of her friends is always like, “Shhh, guys, come on- Cindy’s date… Al Qaida… you guys…” Can you imagine being the girl who took Timothy McVeigh’s virginity? Bin Laden’s high school sweetheart probably claims she was homeschooled. I guess it’s like they say: you can’t pick your exes.

Anyway, I want to focus on is how crazy it is some seemingly normal people, brought up in the same environment as everyone else, can completely fly off the rails and transform into mass murderers and serial killers.

Think about it- names now associated with death and horror- Jeffrey Dahlmer, Ted Kasinsky, Son of Sam, etc. all were guys brought up in fairly normal settings, yet they were capable of unspeakable acts of violence. Adolf Hitler was a painter when he was my age. The Son of Sam worked at the US Post Office. That kid from Alabama now in charge of Somalian Al Qaida? He did inventory at Walmart. This all makes me think: just who can you trust nowadays? With that in mind, here is a list of the Top 5 People in My Everyday Life I Think Will Probably be Serial Killers or Terrorists, if They Aren’t Already:

1. My neighbor’s housekeeper. I live in the one run down house at the end of a street of nicer homes. Our neighbors are pretty cool people and seem to be doing well enough to afford a maid to come to their house every week, but my suspicions are on red alert with all this recent news and she has some characteristics that make me think twice. For starters, she’s always on the move and operates out of a white van with no windows- I know, I thought for sure the driver was a pedophile the first time I saw it until a lady got out. But who knows what sort of materials she’s storing back there? Besides cleaning supplies I guess. Also, she avoids speaking to me when I try to practice my Spanish whenever I run into her in the street. This could be because the neighbors said she is Brazilian and speaks Portuguese, but really that seems a little too convenient.
2. My roommate, Will. Our house has a resident couch guy- we charge him like 200 bucks a month to take up space in the living room while he tries to find a job, but really think about what criteria he fits: he has a lot of free time on his hands by himself to plot stuff, I’m relatively sure his license is suspended for failure to pay parking tickets- so he’s kind of off the grid, and the other day I walked in on him in the dark doing something suspicious but I couldn’t figure out what as he scrambled to cover himself. I’m not going to say he was definitely building a bomb or anything, but he did have a pretty embarrassed look on his face.
3. My Grandfather. I know, a little close to home on this one, but think about it from my perspective: he is always going on cruises to faraway lands with my grandma that, from the slideshow they make us watch, look like the opposite of fun, so really what’s the appeal of all that traveling? Could he be meeting some foreign agents? I dunno, but you can only play Mah Jong so many times before wondering what it’s like to plot the demise of another human being. Plus, he’s like 140 years old, so really, going outside to get the paper is already a suicide mission.
4. The new barista at my local Starbucks, who is obviously hiding some dark secret as she refuses to return any of my romantic advances. Plus, she speaks Italian (I assume grande, venti, and latte are Italian) and everyone knows how Italians hate Americans ever since we beat them at pizza.
5. My nephew Scott. I don’t know what it is about that kid, but I don’t like it. I watched him attempt to take down a piñata last month at his 6^th birthday. There is death behind his eyes. Plus, he’s kind of olive skinned.
6. That’s all I’ve got on my list. For now. I suggest you readers start compiling your own lists of all possible present or future mass murderers around you right now- don’t be afraid to really snoop either. You can find some really cool stuff in the back of an unlocked van.

@stevethompsonjr