Thursday, January 10, 2008

A Criminal with Strange Tastes [Bryan]

When Ellie and I were first married, we were living in a small apartment just off State Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. We were poor, but happy. The area was prone to car break ins. Since Ellie and I didn't have much of value, we decided to leave our car doors unlocked. We figured it would better to let people easily open our car doors and search around for stuff than to have them break out the windows (which happened quite often in that neighborhood).

Our strategy worked! On a number of occasions, we could tell our car had been searched for valuables. Our tapes would be spread across the seat, for example, and the ash tray would be open. But nothing would ever be stolen. Apparently thieves weren't interested in broken cassette tape players and old Simon and Garfunkel albums. We took a grim satisfaction in the thought of a thief rifling through our music, only to be thwarted by our divergent musical tastes.

Now, fast forward to 2008. Bryan is driving a junky, rusted-out car to work. He parks, again, in an area prone to car break ins. He leaves his doors unlocked and never leaves anything anybody would ever want in the car -- just a bunch of unattractive cassette tapes. Does Bryan outwit the thieves?

No! Bryan comes back to his car one day and finds his car cleaned out of cassette tapes. Everything is gone, including one of Bryan's prized Christmas presents, a lecture series dealing with U.S. Middle East foreign policy from 1914-2001.

What kind of a weird thief would steal such a thing? One with a particular interest in the Eisenhower Doctrine? A fascination with the two-state solution? A proclivity for the details of the fall of the Ottoman Empire?

I can only imagine our thief trying to trade the tapes for drugs. "Dude, you gotta here this guy talk about the Seven Day War, man, and Johnson's attempt to pressure Nassarist Arab Nationalism. Its gotta be worth a couple kilos, man!"

I suppose he could sell my beloved tapes to a used bookstore for a few bucks, maybe. But it is one of those things where the worth to me is much more than the worth to him. It is like when I was mugged in Buenos Aires and they ripped the thick prescription lenses off my face. Come on, guys! If you are going to steal from me, at least take something valuable.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Two thoughts:

1) you are way out of touch with the street price of drugs if you think you can get a couple of kilos of anything for the price of some second-hand cassettes.

2) You had thick glasses? And I always thought your vision was perfect. Even funnier that they were stolen!