Some People Just Deserve A Trick

Seems every year after Halloween I write about how things used to be. You know, less people are giving out candy than when I was young or how I would go out trick or treating by myself and now that's just not possible. So am I doing that this year? Well a little and then I'll pass on a story from when I was young. This year I noticed that if three or four houses close together were giving out candy my son referred to it as a jackpot. When I was his age almost every house was giving out candy. You could walk down one side of a street for several blocks and then come back on the other side and your bag would be bulging.

My complaint (as always) is that if you have your garage light on and your porch light on AND you have house lights on but you do not answer your door because you are not participating then you are a jerk. If you don't treat and meet the already mentioned qualities then you deserve a trick. It made me wish I had some rotten tomatoes to throw. But I didn't so I couldn't, not that I really would. What kind of message would I be imparting on my son if I did that? I just don't get why people do that on this one day of the year. It's cruel and unjust I tell you.

On to my promised story. Towards the end of my trick or treating career perhaps around twelve years of age (I can't remember exactly when, hey, I'm old) I had a near incident. I'd been out with a friend but he'd already departed for home while I had chosen to continue on to an area I'd never been to before. It was further out from my normal "territory" than I was used to and it was getting late. The lure of more candy was great however and I pushed on.

My luck was not great. Maybe because people had already given out their candy, maybe people in that area weren't participating that much that year, it's hard to say. With my prospects dimming and very few houses having their lights on I turned and started making my way home. Not long after that I heard a car pull up and a kid I didn't recognize got out. If you're thinking he was also trick or treating late like me then you'd be wrong. He called out to me "hey kid" and started walking towards me.

At this point every fiber of my being screamed out that this was wrong, something bad was about to happen. I kept walking and he kept calling out to me progressively getting louder. The car he had materialized from was pacing him down the street. Suddenly, before he could get too close to me, I decided to make a run for a house that still had it's porch light on close by and started knocking on the door loudly. His cries of "hey kid" changed as he flung epithet after epithet at me before jumping back in the car as the front door of the house opened.

The car peeled out and raced off and I was safe. I don't recall if I even got candy from that house, my mind was consumed with frantic thoughts of how close I had been to getting beaten up and having my bag of candy stolen. Clearly it was time to go home, it would have been most unwise to ignore this omen. My head was on a swivel as I warily walked the rest of the way home. The slightest noise had me spooked that the car was returning and the kid was going to finish the job he had started. None of that came to be thankfully and I made it home safely with my candy intact.

Personally while I believe the kid who wanted to assault me and steal my candy was a scumbag but really I feel that the person driving the car was an even bigger scumbag. It's one thing to go out intending to steal but the person (brother, cousin, neighbor?) was old enough to drive and still took him out knowing what he wanted to do. Hell, maybe it was his idea in the first place. What a role model. There you have it, my story of what almost was. I hope that kid didn't get anybody else that year or any other but even moreso I hope that at some point if he didn't feel some remorse for his actions then he at least eventually got his karmic comeuppance.

Hopefully my son will never have something like this happen to him but if he does perhaps I can teach him to be prepared and ready to defend himself. Of course it doesn't hurt that he's a big kid, much bigger than I was at that age. Unless of course I'm still taking him around when he's twelve or thirteen years old which I probably will be doing. I don't think a thief would have the guts to do it with an adult around. Here's hoping we never have to find out.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

The Robbery That Wasn't

My wife had a scare this past week which is a roundabout way of saying that I also had a scare this past week. She took our son to school and then went to her English class and after leaving went to the store to buy some sillao which is soy sauce. She prefers the Peruvian kind if she can get it. Once she got to the store she discovered that her purse was missing and she went into a panic. Convinced that somebody had stolen it out of her car at the school she raced home and woke me from my fitful slumber to deliver the bad news.

I asked her where she had last seen it and she said she had it at the Hobby Lobby the night before but she knew that she had left it in her car afterwards. Leaving her purse in the car has been her standard procedure and many times I've spoken to her about how it's inviting someone to steal it. Now I told her that she needed to go back to the school and call the police to file a report. As she left I started compiling a list of who we had to notify and what we had to replace. Important things like the credit card company and the bank were at the top of the list but other things were important as well. Her drivers license, her social security card and more were all in there.

She didn't come back to quickly so I was sure that the police had came and were taking her report. After a bit longer she showed back up with a sheepish look on her face and I knew that it had been found. At the school she found out that her car was parked in a blind spot for the cameras so that was no help. Once the police came and took her report she decided to go to the Hobby lobby store that she had been to and, you guessed it, they had her purse.

The night before while there our son had needed help zipping up his coat and she lad laid her purse down  to help him. She the proceeded to walk out not realizing that she hadn't picked her purse back up. Against all odds nothing was missing which was a major blessing. After it was all over we were able to laugh about it but I made sure to make clarify the dangers in leaving her purse in her car like that, not that I think it will make any difference. Perhaps at least she'll make sure it can't be seen.

The truth is there really isn't much anyone could get from robbing us, we're that bad off. Of course in our current predicament financially anything we lost would be hard to overcome. Later that night I started thinking about how little interaction I actually have had with thieves and robbers in my life. In my forty-eight years on this planet I can only think of two instances when something along those lines has occurred and both have been since I married my wife. Does this mean I assign some kind of blame to her? Of course not, it just worked out the way it did.

The first was right after we got married. We were living in her apartment intending to only stay until we found something better. She had already had a problem with someone with a key entering her apartment and stealing small amounts of money (mostly from a cup of coins) but we thought we had fixed that problem by keeping the front door locked and installing a padlock on the back door. That way only we had the key to it. It worked for a while until one night after coming home from work we found that the thief had jimmied the lock open in the bathroom window, crawled in, and made off with her laptop as well as the camcorder we had bought to film our wedding with. Then he or she had left through the much larger bedroom window.

To top it off her jerk landlord refused to believe that it had happened from one of his employees (relatives) and basically accused us of faking it. It was all I could do to restrain myself from punching him out and I think he realized he had crossed a line so he dropped his point and left quickly. Needless to say my wife no longer felt safe in that apartment and we got out as soon as we could.

My second encounter with a thief occurred in the house that we bought and currently live in. It was somewhere around three years after the previous break in and my wife came home with our then less than a year old son to find that we were the victims of a burglary. Some scumbag had busted our door in and grabbed what turned out to be mainly things that had sentimental value. He was in and out more than likely in less than five minutes.

The hard to take thing is that our neighbor saw the perpetrator exiting our driveway with what turned out to be one of our pillowcases stuffed with our belongings. She give the info to the police and they did basically nothing, probably because she didn't see him leaving the house and couldn't one hundred percent identify him. I know, it's a garbage excuse from them but honestly I didn't expect much in the first place. The powers that be in Tulsa have more important things for the police to do, like give out speeding tickets.

So there you have it, my life experience with getting robbed (so far). Two burglaries, no holdups, no car break-ins and nothing stolen from my desk at work, at least that I can recall. After all, I am getting old and my memory isn't quite what it used to be. That sound you hear is me furiously knocking on wood hoping that I haven't jinxed myself.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

The Mysterious Case Of The Vanishing Underwear

Last week after noticing I was running low on underwear and white socks I deduced that it was time to look in the laundry baskets. My wife had just done the laundry a few days before so there should have been a lot of both. What I didn't find had me worried. Where were the white clothes? What had had happened to them? The best my wife could figure was that someone had taken them accidentally or that she had left them (also accidentally). Against all hope we drove over to the laundromat to check but our fears were confirmed. They didn't have them.

If she left them I could see the laundromat throwing them out after a day or two. After all, they are not in the business of storing clothes for people. However if somebody took our clothes from the dryer "accidentally" why would they not bring them back to the laundromat? I know I would if I made such a monumentally dumb mistake. I may not know all of my wife's clothes but I know what most of them look like so in all likelihood I never could have even left the place without noticing I had something that wasn't mine. Some men though would just grab what was in the dryer and not give it a second thought.

That makes me then wonder if they were taken on purpose. If they were, what kind of a loser do you have to be to steal someone elses undergarments? I don't care how many times you wash them I don't want to wear somebody elses underwear. Yes it's all in the mind but to me underwear is personal, I don't share mine with anybody, I don't even like it if I have to borrow someone elses socks or t-shirt in emergency situations. Perhaps other people don't think of underwear as being intimate like I do. Besides, mine were all old, some were torn and some, well, let's just say they'd seen a lot of action.

What kind of a twisted mind would see those and think "I've got to have them!" Hopefully I'll never meet anybody who will share their deep, dark secret of how they just have to steal strangers underwear. If I do I don't know how I could keep the look of horror off of my face. It's too sick to think of. More than likely the person who could do such a thing was scarred for life at a very young age. Sorry, is my sarcasm showing?

So now we have to go out and replenish my stock of socks and underwear. Luckily I hadn't used most of my white t-shirts although I'm sure there are a few that will be missed. We still need to buy some new socks for our son as well. Since money is very tight in our household it's definitely a cost that could have been avoided but what can you you? We all make mistakes, like trusting people not to be thieves with our underwear. Now I just need to find some cool t-shirts that are inexpensive. Not an easy thing to do for someone in their early (okay late) forties who is super picky. I'll try and find a way to move on.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.