I’m gonna cheat and combine events from July and May for this entry into the Fukubukuro because I want to talk about my first real run-ins with crime. For those who don’t know, May was the month my house was broken into and burglarized and July was the month my car window was smashed in and GPS was stolen. On their own those are pretty horrible events with financial impact. I had to change locks and replace stolen/damaged property. It also cost me time talking to the police and various administrators to suspend accounts and it caused a lot of frustration due to the incompetence of the Baltimore Police Department.
I mean, let’s be honest here: if someone steals an internet-ready device and uses it on the internet, their location should be forfeit, right? Yet the Baltimore Police Department, in its infinite wisdom, can’t be bothered to subpoena an ISP to find out where the device was used. They are beyond useless, difficult to get a hold of, and unnecessarily condescending considering their atrocious reputation and pathetic inability to solve and/or stop crimes.
Phew, ok, I need to cool down. Talking about how useless the Baltimore Police Department is gets me all riled up. More to the point, the real harm that was done to me when my house and car were broken into is all psychological. It’s all in having your personal space violated and your sense of security dashed. The night of the burglary I was sound asleep upstairs and my roommate was gone. I very nearly slept downstairs on the couch and I also very nearly invited Min over to hang out. Both could have been disastrous.
Losing stuff is just losing stuff. It sucks and it hurts the wallet, but the fact that I can’t sleep some nights when my roommate isn’t there (she wasn’t there during the B&E either) or that every time I walk out to my car I half expect the window to be smashed in is the real crime. It’s probably better for my safety that I’m hyper paranoid about checking locks and alarms before bed, but I shouldn’t have to feel that way.
Youth is all about indestructibility. When I was a kid I never broke a bone and I was never seriously ill. I guess Eric had a bike stolen once, but that didn’t really affect me because it happened in the backyard and everyone knows those things are exposed to whomever. As an adult these walls are crumbling. I’m more aware of the fragility of even a fit human body. I’ve suffered lasting injuries. My safe spaces aren’t necessarily safe. It reads like naïvety, but the truth is I’ve just always been really lucky. The trick now is to live more carefully, but without letting fear prevent me from doing things I want to do.
Leave a Reply