In The Know

When I worked as a bank teller I formulated a theory that still stands up to scrutiny in my mind today: The most unlikely people know all about your personal business. I seem to encounter more people every day who are going to increasingly great lengths to keep their information private--passwords, encryption, one friend who is a corrections officer even shreds his Post-it notes because he is convinced that convicts’ families go through his trash to find details to hurt him and his family--yet, these same people don’t give a thought to what the bank teller knows, and she knows a lot. Your bank teller knows where you work, when you get paid, how much money you have, how good your credit is, and who you have accounts with. Your bank teller even knows more than your doctor--because you can’t lie to the teller about how much fast food you buy. But who thinks about how secure their bank teller is? Another highly-informed person in our daily lives (well, six sevenths of our daily lives, excluding holidays) is the mail carrier, someone who literally sees all our connections with the outside world. Not that I’m trying to sound paranoid, just pointing out the not-so-obvious fact that we often seem to miss the security forest for the invisible people trees. In Kevin Henkes’ Good-bye, Curtis, the community celebrates a beloved mailman’s last day--and he sends them all thank you notes to the addresses he knows by heart. Something to think about.

http://www.amazon.com/Good-bye-Curtis-Kevin-Henkes/dp/0688128270

http://www.marisabinarusso.com/Curtis.html