I never intended to turn into a stalker.

I used to smirk at fixating on a heartthrob. I used to sneer at succumbing to obsession. I used to do a lot of things … before I took up stalking.

It began innocently enough. A friend mentioned that I might hit it off with her buddy. The poster child for nonchalance, I masked the jolts of adrenaline coursing through my capillaries with a modulated “Oh really?” Inwardly I crowed, Mama’s on the prowl!

After learning his name, it all went downhill. Rather than a standard fact-finding mission, I orchestrated a high-gear identity inquest. And before I knew it, I was hooked on this guy who I had never met and never could meet for fear of exposing my folly: I had skipped Ph and gone straight to the Web site.

Ph is today’s answer to the Magic 8-Ball. Its repository of info helps to weed out undesirables, divulging such essentials as year, curriculum and no_update. The job is even easier when people pad their profiles with dumb quotes, hardy-har-har spouse entries or groaner office titles. So sayonara, “KarmaKitten.” Bye now. Buh bye.

Instead of negotiating the venerable Ph, though, I opted for a more volatile avenue: the personal Web site. I pored over my honey’s homepage for hours on end. I hit that site like a junkie slaps her forearm – desperate, intense, and committed to finding the pathway to paradise.

Other universities protect their online directories, requiring username and password before spitting out sensitive data. Women’s Coalition is lobbying for a similar safeguard, but it’s ineffective against our lamest of enemies: ourselves.

According to Assistant Chief of University Police Daniel McAleer, stalking has surfaced at Northwestern, but its incidence is “relatively low” when compared with burglary and vandalism. How can this be, I puzzled, when everyone I know taps Ph more often than they do kegs of warm beer?

Easily. I don’t know what the hell “stalking” means. The National Institute of Justice defines stalking as harassing or threatening behavior that an individual engages in repeatedly, such as following a person, appearing at a person’s home or place of business, making harassing phone calls, leaving written messages or objects or vandalizing a person’s property.

So I guess I exaggerated when I called myself a stalker. And in light of recent research, it seems that my addle-brained antics are fairly wholesome – at least I did my own dirty work with only the purest of intentions.

Around the world, professional stalking companies have sprung up like strip malls, dotting the landscape of human interaction with their repugnant brand of impersonality. They specialize in wooing and jilting, freeing the rich from engaging in the messy business of managing relationships.

CoincidenceDesign.com originated as a hoax, but response to its concept has been nothing short of spectacular, proven in the site’s 110,000 hits during the first week of January. Appealing to heterosexual men who have glimpsed the “perfect woman,” Coincidence Design executes confidential, ambiguously legal “missions.” For a song of $78,000, it checks the background of a client’s love goddess, investigates her interests, then coordinates a tailor-made “coincidence,” such as meeting at a party in California and then at a New York restaurant three months later.

The submission of several “mission applications” is fast-tracking Coincidence Design from a pipe dream into a reality. “I’m surprised a business such as this doesn’t exist already,” the site’s anonymous creator said in a Web interview.

In Japan, businesses such as Lady’s Secret Service and Office Shadow employ similar methods for a polar purpose: destroying relationships. Charging up to $150,000, wakaresaseya – literally “breaker-uppers” – chase away mistresses, dump tiresome boyfriends, and force longtime employees into early retirement. First, moles gather intelligence on a target, then role-playing operatives entrap and record a target’s scandalous behavior. Rather than face public exposure, 95 percent of the targets flee, to the triumph of the clients. “A little more than kin, and less than kind,” eh?

Prints Publishers Weekly, “Plunging into a passionate obsession lets humans release control and explore unknown depths within themselves. In the end, they may be shattered and alone, but out of that loneliness can come new understandings.”

I don’t know about you, but the only thing I understand is that the peoples of the world are kooky, hard up and dangerously disconnected. It’s time to nurture real relationships. It’s time to reach out and

touch someone. I dare

you to Ph me.