The Bamboozler

The first thing you need to understand about me is that I am a rule follower. I don’t park on yellow curbs, I don’t go in the express lane with one too many items, and I always use my blinker. The thought of breaking a rule causes me much anxiety. Which is what makes my foray into crime so puzzling.

We’re being kicked out of our apartments so that they can turn them into condos and sell them to some poor suckers. Well, we’re in Midtown, so I guess they wouldn’t be POOR suckers. Anyhow, since we moved in 6 months ago, I have always admired the beautiful big bamboo that grows up behind the building along side of the creek. Most of it is well over 20 feet tall. It appeared very sturdy until a storm came thru a few weeks ago. The next day, I noticed that a lot of the bamboo had been knocked down, and partially snapped near the base. There was a bunch of mighty fine bamboo just a lying there. You can do lots of stuff with bamboo. You can make screens, or curtain rods. Napkin rings, or lovely corner displays with back lighting. You can bind several small pieces together and make wall hangings to place over your door. I suppose you could even make a raft!

But of course it doesn’t belong to me. I have no rights to it. So I can’t just go take it. Or could I? No. It belongs to the apartment complex. The grounds keepers will come thru in a few days, and take care of it. Well, they’ll probably just clean it away, and chop it into bits. That would be a might waste of bamboo. Ok. Maybe if I go down to the office, and ASK them if I can have it. They might say ‘no’. In which case, then, I’m really stuck. I’ll have to let them do with it as they will. If I take it after they told me no, then they will know who did it. And as it stands right now, I bet the grounds people don’t even know it has been damaged. They only go back there on Fridays when they are working on the grounds and mowing the grass. It is somewhat hidden behind the building, and further more, most of my neighbors have moved out already.

And that, my friends, is how a criminal mind gets its start. But it doesn’t stop there.

Ok. The apartment complex staff leaves by 6 PM. It gets dark at, oh…8:30 or so. Even tho the bamboo has snapped somewhat, it is still connected and I’m going to have to saw it off. Does my roommate have a handsaw? Yes. Ok. So, I don’t want to do it when it is dark, because then one of the few remaining neighbors might get suspicious and call the cops. So, 7 PM should work nicely. Staff are gone, it is still light outside, and many of my neighbors will either be in with the TV on or out to eat dinner. It’s a go. Maybe next week I’ll plan a train heist.
My stomach starts churning and I almost back out of the plan several times. But finally, 7 o’clock arrives and I go down, handsaw in hand, and start picking out the nicest selection of bamboo. It is pretty quick work, and I try not to look over my shoulder too excessively. There was some bamboo that fell over without snapping, so, out of guilt, I tried to stand them back up, giving them a second chance at life (See! I’m an environmentalist, not a criminal!). I’m not sure how effective that was. I get about 9 bamboo cut, of various sizes. Maybe I have enough to make a screen?

Now I have a problem. They are bigger and heavier than I imagined. We’re talking over 25 feet! To get them up the stairs to my balcony requires tricky maneuvering which will make me plainly visible from the parking lot to any passer by. Out of desperation, I decide to involve another innocent….my roommate. I call him on my cell.

“John, I need your help. Are you alone?”
“Well, yes, but I’m on my way to dinner.”
“I have an emergency. I have just stolen a bunch of valuable bamboo and I need help stashing it.”
“What?”
I explain the whole bamboo thing.
“Well, I can help you after dinner.”
“Uhm..Ok.”

But that will be too long. This has to be done before night fall. So, I begin the arduous process of hauling up 25 and 30 foot bamboo trees onto my 2nd story balcony. Once I have it all up there, I look down at the decimated little bamboo forest, and I see the stark white stalks where the saw bit into them staring up at me, accusingly. And I realize that anyone else who sees the sawed off stalks need merely look up at my balcony, with all of the bamboo on it, and ..well….I don’t want to go to jail. So it is time to start shucking.

Each huge bamboo has many branches and leaves on it that I must break off and dispose of, leaving nothing but the bamboo pipe. This produces quite a bit of waste, so I split it up into three different dumpsters, so no one would see one full dumpster of bamboo remnants, and get suspicious. Then, I have to saw each bamboo into at least 3 sections in order to get them into the apartment and out of sight. Then I have to sweep the balcony of all remaining bamboo bits, to complete the outward appearance of innocence. Meanwhile, the guilt and shame are almost overpowering, and my insides are liquid bags of squirting guilt.

I have quite a haul, however. Actually, too much. This increases my guilt, for I took more than I needed. Ok….not NEEDED….but …you know…more than I can do things with.

After a poor night of sleep, where I had nightmares of being caned with the very bamboo I had harvested, I get up to go to work as if nothing has happened. But I just know I’m going to get a knock on my door from a policeman asking if I saw anything ‘suspicious’, and I don’t know if I can lie to a police officer again. I still have pangs of guilt over the incident when I was 6 and lied to an officer of the law in my own lawn…but that is another story, tho it may be the root of many pathological aspects of my character.

I get a phone call from my friend Theresa. Since her husband, Adam, is a florist, I think I might be able to ask her some questions about re-growing cut bamboo and such. I decide I need to confess my crime to a friend, giving them a chance to loathe me like I am loathing myself, while at the same time knowing I’m gonna have some fabulous bamboo trappings in my new digs. Playing up the drama, I start the conversation with “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this on an unsecured line…maybe I should use code. Here goes….There is this bamboo, see….” And I tell her all about the bamboo and my thievery.
Here are the highlights:
“What are you going to do with all that bamboo?” she asks.
“I don’t know….but that stuff is EXPENSIVE!”
“I know! Tell me about it!” she commiserates.
“Do you think if you plant a cut piece, would it grow? I think it is resilient that way isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” she replies. “I’ll ask Adam. What about drying the pieces you’ve cut?”
“Well, I used to cut down much smaller pieces when I was little, back in our woods, and never had to dry it, but these are bigger.”
“You used to cut it down when you were little?”
“Yeah. I’d make fishing poles out of it, or pretend swords.”
“FISHING POLES?!?!” (she giggles)
“Yeah. Well, ask Adam about drying it.”
“Ok. I’m sure he knows THAT! I’ll have an answer for you at lunch tomorrow.”

After my confession, I feel much better and look forward to lunch the next day with Theresa and our friend Barbara. At lunch, they get to talking about a yard sale, and I generously offer that they can also steal some bamboo from my apartment complex. There is plenty more broken pieces back there. Barbara gets excited about selling them as curtain rods. Theresa gets this panicked, confused look upon here face..as if…well…as if she’d just been bamboozled!
“Wait. Bamboo?!” she exclaims. “Actual BAMBOO!?”
“Uhm,….YES! What did you think I meant?”
“You said you were speaking CODE, so I thought you meant POT!”
“What?! You thought I was harvesting POT? But I told you it was 25 feet high!”
“I know! Adam and I didn’t think it grew that tall.”
“But…you were supposed to find out how to dry it!”
“Yeah. Adam told me exactly what to do. Lay it out in your tub with a heater and a fan on it.”
So, be what I did good or bad, wrong or right or indifferent, at least I’m not as big a criminal as Theresa thought I was!
When I got home from that lunch, the grounds crew had come and taken all the rest of it away.

My harvest is drying behind my bookcases.