White Gloves
A neuroses-inspired true crime story
Neuroses: any of various mental and emotional disorders that involve unusual or extreme reactions to stress and conflict. (Merriam Webster, paraphrased)
Right.
Driving on Highway 119 toward Pearl Street in Boulder, I sense a car holding its position for miles, just to the right of me. Its proximity feels slightly creepy, so I speed up a little. A roughly 20-year-old Chevy Impala with sleek black paint gains on me, but just enough to stay out of my rear view mirror on my right. I try not to think about it; I’ve watched too many Datelines and Criminal Minds.
I did it to myself.
But after a while, it’s harder to ignore. Is this dude trying to bug me, make me paranoid? (Is it even a dude?) I mean, it could be a grandma with 10 kids in the car who’s not even paying attention to my pace, or anyone else’s. Exhaling, I relax and speed up again; whoever it is, I’ll just leave them in the dust.
But within a couple minutes, we’re side by side again.
Hmm.
Just as I swing to look to my right, the dark shadow-car drops out and falls behind, perfectly placed in the center of my blind spot. Now I’m curious, so trying to capture a glimpse, I see a balding head, but not bald exactly, more like a deeply receding hairline.
No big deal. You’re in a car with a full tank of gas, and you’ll pull up to your sister’s house in a minute. Let It go.
But it gets weirder.
Maintaining 55 mph on Foothills Parkway, that annoying Impala pulls up on my left as if there’s a metal bar connecting us, side by side for a couple of miles. I can’t handle it, so I look and hold my gaze until I remember that I’m driving blind. And what do I see in those 4 seconds? A smallish, pale human male, nondescript, but with white gloves on, holding a double-handed grip on the steering wheel. White latex gloves.
What the actual…?
We’ve been on the road traveling together, inexplicably, for a half hour at least and, now that I’ve seen him for myself, I’m thoroughly nonplussed: white gloves?
So, a germaphobe? I mean, let’s just take a moment and think about what type of guy wears white latex gloves while driving?
White-glove-guy might work with pernicious chemicals, and perhaps, he’s been handling something corrosive, and didn’t have time to dispose of the tainted gloves appropriately? I don’t know, that may be a stretch.
What else could it be?
Latex gloves could be used to handle food, I suppose.
Or vaccines?
Maybe, my hyper-vigilant mystery man holds a position at a chemical production factory? Maybe, with his hands shielded, this one drives, all the way home where he meticulously wipes down his steering wheel, disposes the disease-carrying gloves in one of those toxic disposal boxes they use for dirty needles, or unused human tissue? Oof. Next, he must take a shower, wash his clothes and disinfect the shower. I could be on to something here.
Seriously, though, what kind of people wear latex gloves to go from one part of town to another?
Serial killers, that’s who.
It seems incontestable to me. An expert on this particular TV genre, I watch a lot of thrillers and cop shows, and if I’m honest, I think they may have given me crime-colored glasses. I’m not a stranger to being overcome with irrational fear, and I’m talking about fear that requires equally irrational action.
Like the time I didn’t hear back from my (grown) daughter who was spending her evening babysitting 20 minutes away during a Colorado snow storm. I paced up and down the stairs, ate chocolate chips by the spoon, and fretted in tears over images of dark disasters. After a couple of hours of unreturned phone calls and texts, I convinced myself I should head out into the storm to see if she needed rescuing. My understanding husband felt compelled to drive me to the location where I thought she was babysitting, as opposed to letting his highly triggered wife get behind the wheel at night in severe weather. I’ve never seen this capable, Minnesota-man balk at driving on snow packed roads, and he barely flinches under perilous icy conditions. That night, he safely passed by three frozen, snow-banked vehicles while slipping and skating all the way to South Loveland, only to hear his hand-wringing wife finally reach our daughter on the phone as she was preparing to head home. She arrived safe and sound.
For those who are like me out there, I’ll admit that my concerns were valid.
For those who are not like me, I will admit that I had lost my mind. I was fixed on the possibility that something calamitous had happened; I lost sight of the big picture. It’s a sort of madness.
It occurs to me now, maybe I should cut back on true crime shows. Like, all the way back. Season-after-Dateline-season, I’ve listened to stunned survivors tell some cautionary tale about how their first instincts, their Spidey-senses, had warned them, but they didn’t listen.
It makes me wonder, how can I tell if the tingly dread is my spidey-sense, an intuitive, inspired urge to act?
When my damp, sticky palms quiver and crave any action I could take to reassure myself that everyone’s OK, I have to ask myself if this familiar, prickly sensation on the back of my neck is intuition, or is it those 33 seasons of Dateline coughing up from the core of my nervous system like a wave of bile-tainted vomit?
What if I ONLY watched Turner Classic movies and the History Channel for a year?
I guess I could bury my TV in a barrel of sodium hydroxide, and choose not to expose myself to criminal minds and their proclivities at all — I just looked that chemical up on Google — I’m probably being tracked by the FBI now. But if my TV were to be completely decomposed, as I imagine it would be, how would I ever learn that the loved one texting me on the other end of the phone might not really be my friend or sister, or that I can’t know for sure if it’s her honest-to-God texting fingers reassuring me she’s okay?
They have episodes about this.
White glove dude drove on after my exit, but if I ever see him again, clearly, I need to follow him, get his license plate and address, and investigate this more thoroughly.
In the interest of being a good citizen.
