While I was living in the little apartment where I ran The Cabana chat room and participated in the O Chats before Blungo disappeared into the ether, something happened that had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. It didn’t fit anywhere in my memoir, but I still think about it often, first with amusement… and then in utter horror.

While all of this was going on, I had embarked on a yearlong weight-loss journey. Every day after work, I’d come home, lace up my sneakers, and run to the end of my road and back. I had lost a significant amount of weight and was feeling pretty proud of myself, but the cravings for the very foods that caused the issue were still as strong as ever.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures had always been Planters Cheez Balls, the kind in the blue cardboard canister. My penchant for rewarding myself for dieting success by sabotaging that success never ceases to amaze me, but I brought home a brand-new can as a special treat one afternoon.

Sitting at my desk in the back spare room chatting away, I opened the foil seal and took a single handful of the unnaturally orange snack, snapped the yellow plastic lid back on, and gently placed the can next to my monitor. I can still see it sitting there in my mind’s eye, even today. I promised myself not to touch them again until the next day. The kind of restraint I had back then completely eludes me now.

I sat at my desk in the media office all day the next day, my mouth watering at the thought of another handful of the treats. That night, I donned my shoes as usual and, upon my return from my jog, settled at my desk ready to pop open the canister as the modem dialed out with that familiar screech. But as I reached for the can, I realized it was gone.

Gone? I blinked, then looked again. Gone!

“But I’m the only one who lives here!”

I had moved in unexpectedly, the same day the landlord had agreed to give me the apartment without a deposit or upfront rent. When I had arrived, neither my apartment nor the one next door had a lock. I ran to the hardware store to buy one as my friends and family moved my things, and had given Brenda the only other key.

Not even the landlord had one.

“Were you in my apartment today?” I grilled her. She emphatically denied the allegation, insisting she had no reason to enter my private lair. I tore that apartment apart, looking behind every piece of furniture, under the bed, and even under the heap of clothes and accessories at the bottom of my closet.

Nothing.

In a last-ditch attempt to preserve my sanity, I even walked down to the dumpster at the far side of the parking lot, almost hoping I would find it there in a freshly tossed garbage bag. Sleep-eating, then walking the evidence down the stairs, across the parking lot, and back, only to return to bed without any memory of it, somehow seemed more plausible than “I guess they just disappeared.”

Even as I packed up to move out of state two years later, I kept an eye out for a moldy, repulsive can of Planters Cheez Balls, but they never materialized.

Decades passed, and the mystery of the Cheez Balls lingered. I laughed it off, claiming it must have been my father who had a known hankering for a hunk o’ cheese at all times. Still, had his ghost taken the whole canister as a joke? I could certainly fathom him eating the delectable puffs themselves, but taking the can, too? That was one bridge too far.

A few years ago, as I mulled over “The Cheez Balls Incident” yet again, I remembered something that sent a shockwave through me.

One day, as I went to get my shoes from the bedroom closet for my daily jog, I noticed a bit of pink insulation on the carpet in front of the closet doorway. Strange, the new landlord must’ve been in the attic doing repairs and opened the attic access door above the closet for some reason, I thought, naively.

The apartment next door was still vacant.
It still did not have a lock on the door.
And it, too, had an attic access panel in the bedroom closet.

My chin practically melted to the floor as I realized in abject terror, decades after the fact, that someone had broken into my apartment through the attic while I was at work. They could have been covertly living in the apartment next door without my knowledge for weeks, watching me, waiting for me to leave, entering my apartment whenever they were reasonably sure I would be at work all day.

They must have been homeless, hungry. Had they asked, I would have given them the can. But considering I left the closet door open all the time, they could have silently lifted the access panel and watched me in my bedroom and I would have never known. That is the stuff nightmares are made of, and I only noticed 20-some-odd years later because I’ve never forgotten that damn can of Planters Cheez Balls.

Sleep well, friends.