An Inconvenient Robbery

This morning I left my laptop plugged in, and when I came back for lunch, it was gone.

After checking with my roommates, I think I went through the five stages of grief in about five minutes.  Denial isn’t just an Egyptian river, it’s also frenzied searching in places you looked a few seconds ago, in case your computer materialized under that pile of clothes.  Anger: what kind of madman steals an ancient Dell that has no value except to the person who put six years of photos (we’re talking around 25,000) on it?  Do you live to steal the joy of the amateur photographer?!?!  Bargaining–actually I don’t know how Bargaining works so I skipped it.  I substituted Self-Flagellation–Is this because I took a soda from the Nourishment room on the peds floor last week?  Depression-err, I’m still there.  I lied about the five stages thing, I definitely haven’t reached Acceptance yet.

But anyway, much to my chagrin, I realized they didn’t just take my laptop.  They also snagged my old phone (deactivated since I got the iphone haha sucker) and my backpack, presumably to hide their sweet stolen goods.  Unfortunately, my backpack held lots of valuables, including:

Passport, brand new glasses that finally allowed me to see 20/20, checkbook, several packets of grits, Scotland pamphlets about nature and hiking that were among my dearest souvenirs, an envelope with dried pressed ginkgo leaves, a ball of blue yarn (I sprung for real wool too!), and Peds textbooks.

Anyway, I called the cops.  Basically, someone walked in while we were all out through an unlocked door.  They took nothing of value except my laptop (sans charger), my phone, and a bag to hide it in.  The phone was two inches away from an ipod and a packet of cash.  You’d have to venture pretty far inside my room to see the laptop where it was tucked away.  So, they suggested that it could be a personal crime by someone who knows me or knows the fact that our door was unlocked.  If I had any cool secrets, I’d think someone was trying to blackmail me, but I’m not that interesting.  To me it sounds kind of like someone needed a computer and a phone in a hurry…if only they’d emptied out my bag before they scampered and left me my passport and other paraphernalia (I mean, I collected those ginkgo leaves all fall, I was going to make a mobile!).

THE CRIME SCENE (it looks like someone ransacked it, but no, it already started out that way).

The policemen’s other suggestion was that perhaps this was a humorous prank, in which case, if you thought this was funny, just bring back my damn stuff and no hard feelings.  Just a hard baseball bat I have waiting for you.  Bitch.