"We Was Semi-Robbed"

This morning right after I got out of bed, went downstairs, and turned on the coffee pot, I took my "briefcase" and some other stuff out to the car. I do this often because then I don't have to worry about carrying four tons of things while rushing around trying to get out the door. It was still half past dark, but I still noticed that our neighbor was getting into his car to leave.

When I opened the trunk, I paused. All of the stuff that we keep in the trunk-reusable shopping bags, a blanket, a camera tripod, a first aid kit and various random items, was not where it was supposed to be. It looked as if we had slammed on the brakes and all of the stuff had been flung around. This made my Spidey-sense tingle a bit, but I chalked it up to randomness, put what I had carried out of the house into the trunk, and went back inside. I was picking up the paper and anticipating my hot cup of coffee. I decided to yell at Larry about leaving the car unlocked later.

About forty-five minutes later, it was time for us to go. Zane and I headed out the door first, and I opened the car door and let him get in. I went to put my purse on the front seat, and I noticed that there was stuff all over the floorboards. I looked at it, blinked, and registered that most of it was stuff that was supposed to be in the glove compartment. Then the little tiny refrigerator lightbulb in my brain clicked on, and I opened the door of the glove compartment. It was empty, because most of the stuff that had been in there had been pulled out.

I looked in the center console. There were more items strewn about, and more things that weren't where they were supposed to be. I put Zane into his car seat, and I noticed that all the items that had been in the seat pockets(pullups, wipes, maps) had been thrown on the floor. It became obvious that someone had been in our car. Larry had by this time come out of the house, and I informed him of my deduction. He was less than impressed by my conclusion.

"What the heck did he take?" he wanted to know. So I started looking. All the loose change that we kept in the center console, which probably added up to two dollars on a good day, was gone. Three or four cds were missing. As we looked through the car, I gathered the 'trash' and put it in a bag, so the car would be clean. Later, I would realize that a sandwich bag of about 60 tokens from Chuck E. Cheese was also missing(I had left it in the glove compartment). That was all we could think of that might be missing, because most of what stays in our car is child related. Not really anything worth stealing.

As we were driving up our street discussing whether someone had indeed gone through our car-trash and taken some stuff, Larry spotted two police cars and some people standing on their front lawns. Larry pulled in behind one of the police cars, got out and spoke to one of the officers for a minute. Apparently someone went up and down our street breaking into cars. He also tried to open someone's garage door, which set off an alarm and got someone's attention. That person called the authorities, I guess.

I am feeling a bit creeped out about all this. I spend more time worrying about surviving a Zombie apocalypse than having our car broken into, and now that bugs me. What if this guy had been nearby when I walked out to put the stuff in the trunk? This guy was probably only looking for loose change(and if he didn't have an overhead light on, that bag of game tokens must have felt like a ginormous bag of quarters), and items he could carry off quickly, but if he had taken me out, the front door of our house was unlocked. Easy pickings with my husband and son asleep upstairs. That thought makes me extremely angry. It makes me want to hurt this person, who is probably just a random teenager who decided to see what he could get in the way of spare change. I still want to punch him in the face. A lot.