12/25/10

To the person who tried to buy Verizon prepaid minutes with my debit card today

You took two cameras, a GPS and a Zune, my wallet, twenty dollars, and an insurance folder from my car. After calling State Farm, I know that the total value of all this is estimated at $744.00. After talking to the police, I learned that there’s not much that’ll happen now. Although, he did take fingerprints from the car, which felt a little like CSI.

The insurance folder included insurance cards, registration, some napkins, and a 10mm socket wrench. In my wallet, there was my license, my school ID, three different insurance cards, a credit card, a debit card, and a significant stack of punch cards that I collected from various restaurants. The worst part about losing the cameras is losing the memories on them. The GPS was broken anyway.

I don’t know why you did this. I’ve imagined a lot of reasons why, but the one I like best is so your kids could have presents on Christmas. I know that doesn’t explain everything, like the insurance stuff, but I still like to imagine your children unwrapping one of the cameras, or the music player, or whatever on Christmas. In my head, they’re younger—maybe nine or ten, but they might be older too. It doesn’t matter. I imagine they’ll be excited, that they’ll wonder how you got the money together to afford something like this. They will probably hug you. They will be so excited. And, when I imagine this, I wish you would have taken more.

4 comments:

Matthew R. Hall, Esq. said...

Drag, bro. I'm not sure whether I buy your philanthropic outlook or not (I'm leaning toward "yes" because I don't think you're really too attached to material things), but I feel for you. I think the worst part of having something stolen is the violated sense of safety. The last time I thought something had been stolen, I felt a sick sinking in the bottom of my gut and kept repeating, "Oh crap, crap, crap," in my mind. I remembering feeling both resignation and illness.

Oh, Merry Christmas.

Skyler said...

Yeah, it's a strange feeling coming home now. I half expecting to find some druggies trying to go through my car again or trying to get into the house. It's so untrustworthy, and I hate that.

As for the outlook--I feel bad if that's why they took the things. Like you said, I wasn't too attached to them, and if they took them to make their kids happy, fine. But, if they took them to sell of just to take them, then karma will get them.

I think the worst part was losing my friends spare car key, which I was supposed to use to take care of his car while he's home in Brazil over break. It was one of those expensive, laser-cut, switchblade keys too.

Chan said...

Suck, man. Someone stole a case of CDs from my car once, in Rexburg. The thing that made me most mad about that was that I can't imagine that someone that goes around stealing CDs from cars at the cheapest apt. complex in Rexburg has the same taste in music as me, so the person probably didn't even like my CDs. Except for maybe my John Denver CD. I can't imagine someone not liking John Denver, thief or no.

I like that Matt's reply begins with "Drag, bro," and mine begins with "Suck, man."

Cools said...

I think I would have ended it with a different sentence: "And when they look up at you with wonder in their cherubic eyes, your soul will canker and you'll pull that lever and send yourself straight to hell."

Good on you for looking on the brighter, more charitable side, brother.