Dear NSA: Have a nice day.

This whole Snowden/NSA business has me pondering…did we EVER really have the presumption of privacy? I’ll tell you a funny story that explains why I’m terribly intriguing and notorious, and why the answer is NO.

When I was 16, I worked as a maximum-security teller, deep in the vault of a major Omaha bank. I counted, sorted, and balanced deposits of 500K to a couple million every day. I counted and sorted brand spanking new money that came from the Federal Reserve. I trained straw-brained ex-Nebraska football players so they could move upstairs into management and make 100 times my salary ([growling] another blog post someday).

Anyway, when new money came from the Fed, it came bundled between two dollar-sized pieces of pine called “fed boards” that kept the bills all nice & neat. Sometimes, the ink on bills was so fresh when the Fed bundled the money, that the impression of bills would be stamped on the boards. And when a teller unbundled bills, or took rubber bands off bundled bills in large deposits, sometimes a corner of a bill would tear off. We had a guide to show us how big the tear could be for the bill still to be usable. So the girls (all females in the vault, except the manager, of course [growling], another blog post) in MaxSec had a habit of saving fed boards and torn corners for me. I had plans to make a wonderful collage out of it all—a mushroom cloud, an atom bomb, a weeping woman…I dunno, something rebellious...it was the 70’s.

When I left the bank after a 1½ years, I took my garbage bag of boards & corners with me. And when I moved into a little rental house in Lincoln with my friend, I took them with me. And when I ran off with musicians to New Mexico and my roommate joined the Moonies and left town while I was gone (another blog post someday), and my mom had to move all my stuff back to Omaha, somehow the bag got left behind.

Now I’m back from New Mexico (tense shift intentional), and I get a job working as a teller at an Omaha drive-through bank ([growling] another blog post someday—I got fired for objecting to sexism on the job). One day, I get a call at work. It’s the Omaha Secret Service. They want me to come to their office. NOW.  I go downtown. They escort me into a tiny room, where two nondescript men in grey suits (seriously) are waiting. One’s sitting behind a desk, one’s sitting on the edge of the desk. They’re both young, barely older than my then 19 years. As I recall, the conversation goes something like this:

SS: Do you know why you’re here?

ME: No.

SS: (pulls a black garbage bag from behind the desk and opens it a smidgen to let me look inside) Do you recognize this?

ME: Hey! Those are my fed boards!

SS: Where did you get these? What were you planning to do with them?

ME: (long story about MaxSec, many side comments about sexist business practices, substitute “doll house” for “atom bomb,” laughing)

SS: Ms. P (me)…do you think this is funny?

ME: Yes.

SS: (pulls out an envelope from the desk, lets me peek inside) Do you recognize these?

ME: Yes. They’re torn corners of bills (started another long story, interrupted)

SS: Do you know defacing American currency is a crime? What did you plan to do with these?

ME: (various non-threatening collage ideas)

SS: Ms P, did you live at (Lincoln address) from X-date to X-date?

ME: Yes.

SS: We received a report from witnesses who claim you were engaged in counterfeiting, and that they observed you burying things in the backyard at this address.

ME: (busted out laughing so hard, I nearly fell off the chair)

SS: Ms. P…do you think this is a laughing matter?

ME: Are you kidding? Can I have my stuff back?

SS: No.

It turns out, two old wino brothers moved into the Lincoln house after my roommate and I left. They found the boards & corners, left behind in the house. They were delusional and paranoid, and they ended up reporting us to the SS. According to the brothers, in addition to counterfeiting and burying things in the yard (bodies??) while they were sleeping, we also followed them everywhere they went, although they really couldn’t say what we looked like.

Two things: (1) I totally have underworld cred from this, right? I should have a gangster name, like Mavis Moneybags or Doris the Digger. (2) I’m pretty sure I was on some “keep an eye on her” list long before the NSA started keeping their bajillion fly-eyes on us all.

I like to think the young SS guys laughed their arses off after I left that day—it was probably the most fun they had their entire careers. I also like to think the SS, NSA, or whomever is tasked with reviewing homeland spy data, is so horrendously bored by our lives that they can barely get out of bed in the morning to go to work.

I’m glad Snowden filled us in on what the NSA is up to, but I’m not worried them spying on my life. If they’re listening, they’ll find out I adore my kids, I dream about retirement, I knit like a fiend, I worry about my ailing dog, I love poetry, I don't have much patience with apathetic students, I’m slightly obsessive about coffee and wine, and like any good daughter, I call my mother. Wow. Fascinating.