Our car was burglarized last night. This will be the third time in the seven years we’ve lived in this house. I know some of you may be thinking; “wow, what a bad neighborhood” but you see that is the joke. I LIVE IN THE SUBURBS. And when I say suburbs I mean the quintessential suburbs of Dallas. We are 45 minutes north of Dallas. There are no crack houses, prostitutes or gangs running around our little bedroom community. Nope, just bored teenagers who are looking to pawn money for drugs. (At least that is what I’m telling myself). Each time our car is ravaged I’m struck by the stupidity of the thief.
Break In #1 – the car was unlocked (lucky us) and he took my case of CD’s. Joke was on the burglar since they all had been copied from real CD’s and thus he couldn’t actually sell them. What value is there in a CD with “Christina Aguilerra” scrawled across it with a Sharpie marker?
Break In #2 – He smashed our passenger side window (car locked this time – unlucky us) and took my book bag from school. I’m assuming he was looking for a computer and when none was found kindly dumped my book bag in my neighbors yard. All contents were returned to me with the addition of bugs in my bag and $150 to fix the window. The burglar did NOT take our satellite radio which was adhered to the dashboard with velcro, my case of CD’s or even my day planner which had our bank account numbers in it. Very smart
Break In #3 – Car was unlocked (lucky us) and he kindly opened every compartment in the car and emptied the contents on the front seat. This time the joke was on him because having just arrived home from being out of town we thoroughly emptied the car (in order to sort through everything in the house). I don’t even think there was an old french fry in our car.
These break-ins are in addition to the prostitute who showed up at our house one night and the vandalism we suffered to our giant, inflatable, Halloween snow globe. (I will spare you the details but alas we had no snow globe for this year). I guess I’m old but I really don’t understand the motivation here. We live in a very nice middle-class neighborhood with good schools. If these are kids doing this for kicks — well, it frankly isn’t funny. If it is kids doing it for drug money then get smarter about what you are stealing. (Our neighbor said they tried to steal his 100lb hydraulic jack, but when they realized how heavy it was they dumped it 6 doors down).
I share this with you as a cautionary tale. Let me summarize the lessons learned here.
#1 don’t lock your car
#2 don’t leave expensive things in your car overnight
#3 the suburbs are not safe
#4 teenagers are as stupid today as they were 50 years ago.
Perhaps I should leave a personalized note and some home-baked cookies in my glove box just in case they come to visit again.
Dude with all of David’s tech knowledge, you guys should put up a camera.
Ooh, surveillance cams, good idea.
We had our house broken into in FL, but we lived in a very bad neighborhood. I really did feel violated and scared and icky, though. And decided right then that we’d move, regardless.
But I can see how you’d almost feel betrayed when you pay for a safe neighborhood.
We’ve had these issues in our neighborhood as well. Apparently a favorite thing to do is to break into the car, open the garage with the garage door opener and let yourself into the house. Most people don’t lock the door from their garage to their house. BAD IDEA.