“When the same guy brings your mail every single day, you start to wonder,” explains researcher.

QUIBBLETON, VA - According to two somewhat recent studies, over ninety-five percent of Americans are being stalked.

“People always ask, ‘Why would anyone stalk me? I’m not a celebrity. I’m not even Scotch,’” says Dr. Heimlich Wong, a researcher currently at the University of Quibbleton, VA. “Harrumph! You may as well leave your doors unlocked while you’re pumping gas.”

A skinny yet pasty Caucasian and pushing 70, Wong often perches on a bar stool by his office entrance and peers down the hallway through large binoculars. Both he and his binoculars are camouflaged in an “office supply” motif. If you squint, his outfit appears to be a bookshelf of impressive medical tomes, and his binoculars look not entirely unlike two styrofoam cups.

He has shared his expertise in numerous books, including A Long and Boring Study of Stalking and A Long and Boring Study of Stalking, Part III. “Who reads sequels?” he comments. “Everyone wants a trilogy, but back then I didn’t have enough material for three books. So far, no one’s noticed.”

Wong first got interested in stalking (studying it) over fifteen years ago. “I’m no conspiracy theorist,” he explains as he scans the hallway. “They all wind up dying mysterious deaths. But when the same guy brings your mail every single day, you start to wonder.”

Unfortunately, his initial study garnered little funding, but he did land a temporary grant from Merriweather Hathaway, his next door neighbor. “She’s had a crush on me since she was 55.” In this study, Wong logged every encounter he had, tracking how often each person crossed his path.

The results were staggering. He faced, not one stalker, but a veritable army, including:

• supermarket cashiers
• his local agnostic minister
• co-workers
• students
• even his own parents

“I was seeing these people two, three, four times a week,” Wong recalls. “If that’s not stalking, I’m a sun-ripened tomato.”

These amazing findings were destined to unsettle the world and catapult Wong into global fame. But the road would be rocky.

“For years, publishers wouldn’t touch Long and Boring,” Wong says. After his 1000th rejection slip, he wondered whether the problem might be that while Part I had 408 pages, Part III had only 22. “At first, I was going to fill the second one out with a mammoth index that had entries like ‘the’ and ‘I’. Then it hit me—I should do another study!”

Now tenured, Wong applied for a state grant and received a respectable $680,127.23. After paying off his second and third mortgages and visiting relatives in Las Vegas, he had enough left over to hire several medical interns to track randomly chosen students. Were the subjects being stalked?

The results were the stuff of legend. Of 148 subjects, every single one reported being followed.

“And that was that!” Wong crows. “Over 95 percent—stalked!” Publishers took him to lunch. Mainstream America quaked with fright, as usual.

“Stalkers will stalk anything, even their own feet,” warns Wong. “Ever seen construction workers standing around and staring at a ditch? Stalkers.”

Fortunately, in his upcoming A Long and Boring Study of Stalking, Part IV, Wong offers ways to win the stalking game.

“The key is prevention. If you wait until you’re actually being stalked, you’ll never shake the creep. Get proactive. Change your name, every month. Make it inconspicuous. It’s not like I was born Heimlich Wong. Do I look Italian?

“And move frequently. I’ve been in this office for two weeks, and that’s pushing it. I’ve already had visits from two separate students who managed to decode the directory. Brr. Keep on the move. Of course, don’t get paranoid.”

Sage advice, and mainstream America is taking it.

There are critics. “With tax-slurping idiots like Wong, people will start to ignore real stalking!” rants Lois Blade, a local extremist. “Way to trivialize the tragedy, bozo!” Blade is single and widely considered unattractive.

Yet Wong’s success does have one real wrinkle. Oddly, all 148 subjects described the stalker as wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard. Quibbleton medical interns also happen to wear white coats and carry clipboards.

But Wong has a ready answer. “Harrumph!”