And Another One Gone
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2004 12:51 PM
Friday, Emily notified me that some almost certainly well-meaning person decided to liberate my bicycle. My beautiful blue Eddie Bauer 7-speed bike with great shocks and comfy butt padding was clearly just too lovely to keep chained on the sidewalk, so someone freed it. When she told me, I don't think I reacted very much. I was worried that she thought I didn't care or maybe I was so in shock, but it was more that I had no idea how to react because I'm just so tired. There wasn't really an emotion that would fix it or make it better. There was just nothing.

I know that I'm a victim here, but I didn't feel victimized because I've already done that. This was the fourth major theft in my life so I've kind of used up all the stock reactions already. I came to realize last night that I'm just tired of it. First, in the seventh grade, my strings class (I played the violin) had a full orchestra rehearsal with the woodwinds, brass, and percussion classes. We left our bags in one music room while playing together in another. When we finished, no one had any money left. I knew I had but a few dollars in my backpack so it was not a huge loss, but I felt incredibly violated. Wasn't school supposed to be a safe place? Who knew we were all off away from our bags? Who steals from fellow students? Didn't the thief know it was wrong? No one was ever caught.

Three years ago, my parents' house was robbed. Everyone's was home for the summer, but it was the first time all six of us had been out of the house, so it was pretty clear someone had been casing the house. Real comforting for a neighborhood with zero crime. It appeared that a couple of guys broke in and stole my laptop, my sister's laptop, two of her very expensive cameras, money, checks, and various other things. They were particularly thorough, though they missed a wallet packed with credit cards and another laptop (admittedly one that was at least eight years old). They pulled everything out of everyone's dressers and closets and flipped all the mattresses, leaving masses of stuff just strewn across the floor of every room. It was just overwhelming and depressing. I really felt violated. It took me a couple days to clean my room-I just didn't have the energy. All my class notes, my writing, things I couldn't even remember or replace just gone. (To add insult to injury, it took two trips to the police station and multiple calls for my mom to get the report actually filed. Nice work, OPD. No one was ever caught.)

Then last year I found out that my identity had been stolen in November 2001. That was a real treat. I never found out because the person opened four accounts, closed three within the month, and then paid the fourth one of every month, until well, (s)he stopped paying. And then the collection agency started calling me. There was a very mean guy who found it unbelievable that someone would fraudulently open account in someone else's name and then pay it off, which actually seems pretty smart to me-go undetected for a long time, get the benefit of a card, and ditch it when you're done. The collections guy also lied to me, which delayed me figuring out what I needed to do. I eventually got wise and filed a police report, wrote to the credit reporting agencies, and wrote to all the credit card companies and it was resolved, but it was pretty stressful at the time. No one was ever caught.

And then Friday. My bike. It was good thing I went for one last ride the Saturday before. This probably was good and bad because at least I had, but then it also got me thinking about riding more on the weekends, which is out of the picture for now.

I'm not angry really, I'm just tired of it and it's not worth wasting energy, particularly negative energy, on it. There's nothing I can do, I'm not getting the bike back, and there's no one to be mad at. And I know this happens everyday. The refrain in my head in the last couple of days though has been from Stephen Sondheim's brilliant Into the Woods, from "Last Midnight":

You're all liars and thieves,
Like his father,
Like his son will be, too-
Oh, why bother?

You'll just do what you do.

I don't think it's that bad, but I'm just gonna let this one go. There'll be a report, things will be done, a statistic will be added, but the culprit's going to get away with it and I just can't get too upset about that.

comments? e-mail me.