Rabbitch

An open letter to the screaming assflap who thought it was ok to break into my car last night:

Dear Sir/Madam/Dickhead:

Fairly recently, we got a second car. We purchased (for an unbelievably low price) a Ford Exploder Explorer because even though I haven't really done much dyeing since last October or so, I still go to fibre fests from time to time and need a larger vehicle than the little Chevy Cavalier my parents gave me a few years ago, so that I can take things like my event tent, display cubes, The Gridwall of Doom -- and oh yes, my family. I got it just before we took our first family vacation in 12 years, culminating in our week-long sojourn at the Fibre Week in Olds, Alberta. Although I'm not a huge fan of North American cars, it's certainly paid its dues already. For that one trip alone, the full purchase price of the car was pretty close to what I would have paid to rent a larger vehicle for two weeks. If we had rented, we would have returned the vehicle upon our return and would have had nothing to show for it. As it is, we now have a second very-needed reliable vehicle.

I am most pleased about this, even though I had to take money out of my ever-dwindling retirement fund to pay for it.

This morning about 3:30am I was sitting watching TV with my husband, enjoying some of the very-scarce time we get to hang out together. We'd had a late dinner (it was delicious, thank you for asking) and were having a drink, just sort of lazing about, when I heard an annoying noise. I finally figured out that it was a car alarm going off.

After a couple of minutes, when the noise didn't stop, I went out to see what asshole hadn't heard their alarm and had left it blatting for so long.

Apparently that asshole was me (and I apologize to my neighbours for not realizing sooner that it was my car and for not turning the alarm off more quickly).

I turned off the alarm and at first all seemed well. I started to walk around the car to see what had happened. I thought perhaps some person coming home in a drunken state had tripped and fallen against it, jostling it and setting off the alarm (we only have one parking spot in the car park in our complex, so it's parked on the street outside our townhouse. It's a large vehicle and the sidewalk is quite narrow), or perhaps the person parked behind me had nudged it while "parking by ear", as it were, and set the thing off.

And then I saw that one of the small windows on the rear passenger side was smashed.

I opened the car doors and at first thought that nothing was taken from the car; we don't keep much of value in there. And then I realized ...

There had been a bag on the back seat. A bag that very closely resembled a laptop case.

I had meant to bring the bag in when I got home from grocery shopping (for the delicious meal that we ate, and to which you were not invited) but I had to make four or five trips from the car to the house, and at the end I just left it there.

The reason I couldn't be arsed to go back for it was that all that it contained was a few pencils, a felt-tipped pen and a sketch book.

The sketch book that my husband and my 12-year-old daughter take with them to the coffee shop when they hang out while I sleep or work or whatever.

They are both artists and they love having coffee and drawing with and for each other. It's important Daddy/Daughter time.

And that bag was gone.

Now tell me; when you swiped the bag, you must have realized from the weight that there was no computer in there. Why the hell did you bother to take it? Was it that you'd cut your hand smashing the glass (please let this be true) and then had shat your pants when the car alarm went off (please please let this be true) and just ran off in a panic?

Was it because you're an idiot and don't know how much a computer weighs?

Was it because you'd gotten SOMEthing, ANYthing that didn't belong to you and so somehow you felt like you were a winner, even though the opposite is most clearly true?

It's not a great loss to us. I'm annoyed about the window -- I really don't have the money to fix it right now but I can hardly leave the car open to the elements. August is an expensive month for us. My daughter and I usually go to the fair, and then there's back-to-school clothing and school supplies. There's not an awful lot extra this month. Fixing the window is going to be terribly inconvenient for us, financially, but we'll manage, even if I have to dip into the retirement fund yet again.

But I'm sure you couldn't care less about all that.

You might care about the fact that if you'd taken a few more seconds to look around in the car that you'd have scooped a pile of CDs and a brand new phone charger. You might even care that there were a couple of brand-new camp seats still in their bags (worth about $20 each) and a few other things that were in the back. Haste makes waste, baby.

I hope you're happy with your new satchel. I wouldn't carry it about with you in public much if I were you, seeing we did report the incident to the police and provided them with a description. It's a fairly distinctive bag and I suspect you'd have trouble coming up with a suitable reason for it to be in your possession.

I know you likely will never read this, as you don't have the snazzy new laptop that you thought you'd snagged upon which to read posts -- that is, if you're literate enough to do so -- but I truly hope that you enjoy your new sketch pad that you stole from a little girl.

I'm really sorry that crayons weren't included -- I'm thinking that's more your style than pencils and felt-tipped pens, no?