Engaging in elaborate schemes to hide secrets can quickly evolve into a full-time occupation. Cover-ups can be exhausting.
Some are on a grand scale, secrets that, when exposed, affect thousands, as in the Watergate variety, (“Watergate had become the center of the media’s universe,” pined Richard Nixon, when it was all over.)
Or, hidden maneuvers can be of the simpler sort, like my cousin, Donna, hiding her empty Coca-Cola bottles in grandmother’s dress pockets when we were kids. I figured Donna knew what she was doing since she was from a big city, Kansas City. Then grandmother emerged wide-eyed from her clothes closet, displaying the evidence, holding the empties like they were DNA samples, peering at each grandchild, wanting to know, “whodunnit?” Children trying to hide the evidence isn’t an activity exclusive to city kids. A couple of months ago, when I asked about all the empty Tootsie Roll wrappers in the lower kitchen drawer, our grandson conveniently exited the room.
Destroying the evidence, or at least concealing it, isn’t always bad.
My four-year-old granddaughter and I are currently partners in an undercover operation; we’re hiding sticks. She found them while she was watching me dump waste into my composters.
“Where can we hide these sticks?” she wanted to know.
The shed seemed like a good place to me. “Don’t tell Eli” (her brother), she urged.
And so began “Operation Hide-the-Sticks.” Now, every time she comes to visit, we make our way to the shed and check the status of her sticks. If we’re sitting in the house and the conversation turns to boring adult talk, she places her index finger over her lips, silently shushes, then cuts her eyes to the shed, her signal to me for another covert mission. “C’mon, PopPop,” she whispers as we tiptoe from the house to the shed, “the coast is clear.”
We like to move the sticks to different nooks or boxes in the shed, just in case they’ve been under surveillance. Then, after tucking them away in their new location, Emmie methodically arranges, or rather orders me, to put everything back in its proper place. “Put the ladder back, PopPop, or it will look suspicious.” “Stack the boxes back like they were, PopPop, so it won’t look suspicious.” “Close the door, just like it was, so it won’t look suspicious.“
“Suspicious” is her new favorite word, at least when it comes to concealing the sticks. I feel like I’m a stick-hiding plainclothes agent. “Don’t look suspicious, PopPop,” she says as we walk back to the house.
The sound of the word “suspicious,” raises an eyebrow with me. It’s almost onomatopoeic. The very word “suspicious” comes with a snake slithering alongside it. “Suspicious” is from the Latin verb suspicere, “to mistrust,” and that from the root specere, meaning “to observe,” or “to keep an eye on.”
When I asked Emmie what it means, her definition was, “It means you’re trying to hide something.”
Elvis worked it into a hit song: “Suspicious Minds.” He crooned, “We can’t go on together/With suspicious minds/And we can’t build our dreams/On suspicious minds.”
Google the topic, “Suspicious that your lover is cheating,” and you’ll get a slew of websites filled with advice about how to know if your amorous partner is engaging in deceptive activity with another person.
The internet lights up with an abundance of information on the topic because the possibility exists for illicit behavior in relationships. Therefore, people want to have tools for managing that, a knowledge of ways to see through the smoke screens meant to conceal the evidence, which is why the words to Elvis’ song resonated with so many people. People don’t want to be the victims of clandestine relationships.
Being sneaky is a heavy burden to bear, whether you’re an undercover agent for the good guys, or stealing away for an overnight tryst at a hotel, or hiding files you’ve snatched without permission from someone’s office.
As for Emmie, there’s no harm in her hiding sticks, unless she manages to conceal them from me: now that would be suspicious.