Little Bit Revenge in Tasty Sauce

I cannot think of a more appropriate topic than revenge, given that it is 3:35 a.m. and I am wide awake and have been so since 2:15 a.m. The reason I am awake is that I live in Huntington Beach, California, better known as Surf City. Huntington Beach is a lovely little community with the longest stretch of beautiful beach in the continental United States—eight miles of surf, sand, shorebirds, wetlands, beach bunnies, surfers, and three—count them, three—police helicopters.

One of those police helicopters flew over my house at least three times beginning at exactly 2:15 a.m. this morning, waking me from a sound and profoundly restful sleep, to which—despite a healthy dose of self-medication—I have been unable to return. I am currently brainstorming methods of revenge, which so far include standing on my deck waving my fist in the air and flicking the deck porch light on and off (unacceptable because my neighbors might get more aggravated at me than at the helicopter).

I might not be so aggravated if this didn’t happen far too often, not quite once a week but more often than it should. And yes, I have called the police department to complain, and was told by a somewhat huffy receptionist that the helicopter police are looking for criminals and trying to keep my community safe. I am very appreciative of our police force's commitment to keeping our community safe. However, I suggested that a patrol car might have a better chance of catching a criminal down here on the ground, and asked if the police department had considered that at 2:15 in the morning, sending a patrol car might be a more efficient, and certainly a more considerate, response to criminal activity. Because you see, Huntington Beach simply doesn’t have any criminal activity worth mentioning for the most part.

The latest police blotter reports as of April 1 include the following: a caller said her car had been vandalized with shaving cream; a fight occurred over a parking space; a juvenile was seen putting stickers on a MacDonald’s sign and then taking pictures of it (the police, the blotter says, made him remove the stickers, took him home and explained what had happened to his mother); a resident reported that he tried to sell a watch on the Internet and that the transaction was cancelled without his consent; a surf store employee said a co-worker had “drank a blue energy drink” two days ago and has been “flipping out and shaking ever since”; a caller complained that someone left a dog locked in their vehicle; and a taxi minivan driver drove away from a gas station with the pump still inserted into his vehicle (and what, pray tell, is a helicopter going to do about him if they find him, which ought to be easy since a gas station pump attached to a car and dragging along the street is likely to be somewhat noticeable).

This is the type of criminal activity typical of our sleepy little beach town. Exactly how effective a helicopter looking for a typical "criminal" in the above examples might be is highly dubious. I'm still angry, but it is now 4:30 a.m. and I'm going to try going back to sleep now. Perhaps I can dream my revenge because as angry or aggravated as we might get, revenge usually turns back on the person who exacts it, particularly if he or she does so in a hurtful way.

However, revenge can be a great motivator, a source of energy if exercised in an appropriate way, and even a path to fame and fortune. Sue Grafton, author of the A is for Alibi, etc., mystery series, became wealthy and celebrated as a result of revenge, you might say. At a session at a recent LA Festival of Books, she noted that her series of novels were inspired by a nasty divorce. She was broke, out of work, and hardly surviving along with her two children. The soon-to-be ex-husband was being extremely difficult in her opinion, so she often lay awake at night and thought of ways she could murder him and get away with it. Eventually a friend suggested that she take her vengeful imaginings and turn them into a book—and voila, A Is For Alibi, etc., and super-sleuth Kinsey Milhone were born—and Ms. Grafton got rich and famous, got rid of the difficult husband, and found a new wonderful husband—so you can see what a Little Bit of Revenge moderated in a Tasty Sauce can do for you.

Copyright Susan Matthewson 2009