The perils of personal theft

The footprints of sand and dirt on the floor, the cigarette burn made they put through your shirt while digging through your closet, the fact they likely live in your neighborhood and know exactly who you are … these are the types of things that really creep you out when somebody breaks into your apartment and steals your shit.

The fact they stole the old computer and TV don't bother you that much (well, only if it's a 19 inch TV and a computer you don't ever use anymore, which was the case with me). They're technically objects that can be replaced. But the fact that some dirty cocksucker's hands sifted through your mail, perhaps looked at your bills, your pictures, read your letters, and maybe even took a piss in your dishwasher for some twisted shits and giggles … that shit really makes you want to bash some motherfucker's head in.

Yeah, for those of you who don't know, our apartment got broken into last weekend. Pretty much everything we paid over $50 for was taken (except, inexplicably, a Play Station 2 — those fuckers must really not be worth shit these days). My laptop and ipod, thankfully, were with me back in Omaha at the time, or the tone of this blog would be much, much more solemn.

The whole thing has the look and feel of a local job: Somebody who saw us leaving, or knew our coming and goings and the light patterns in our apartment well enough to tell if we were both gone for the whole weekend or just out on an epic weekend binge (which for us, actually happens quite frequently).

What makes that creepy is how the person who robbed the place might pass us on the street every now and again, who knows who we are, and every time he sees us he giggles to himself thinking about the time he broke into our place, violated our space and stole anything of value. Every time I leave the apartment these days I find myself looking around to see if anybody's watching me leave. (This is especially peculiar when I'm listening to Rockwell's greatest hits.)

Not an overly awesome scenario.

I suppose the two saddest things you realize after the majority of your personal valuables get stolen is (if you're a broke twentysomething like Ry and I) that the combined street value of your personal belongings likely hovers around a couple hundred bucks. (The obviously positive inverse of this is that you also realize none of your friends like you only because of your money).

And it occurs to you that your net worth is no about as low as its been since you were 15.

And of course, you feel sorry for your poor little DVD player which you found resting upside down in the middle of the floor neglected in the a chaos of thievery. I can't imagine its self-esteem is doing too well these days, knowing that in the eyes of a wanton criminal it wasn't even worth the effort to pick up off the floor and stuff into a bag.

Poor thing. We're going to get through this together, though.