Friday, April 19, 2013

Criminals Blow

I feel completely violated. Not my person, but my sense of security. Last night someone broke into my outside storage building. When my dogs were going crazy and barking a trail from my bedroom and out of the doggy door I could tell it wasn't the usual nuisance barking (I'm sure my neighbors just love that). I figured it was deer in our side yard or a possum or skunk digging around in the back yard. My husband is out of town, so I dragged myself out of bed to call the dogs back in. By the time I opened the back door and stumbled out to the porch, I could see the door of the storage building was ajar. I immediately began formulating the scolding I was going to give my son in the morning as I made my way across the pavers in my bare feet. As the dogs went berserk at the back fence I realized that the door was actually propped open with a flower pot so I slammed it and ran back into the house, calling the dogs as I went. Needless to say, I stayed awake for the rest of the night, straining my ears for any sounds that were out of the ordinary.

This morning, the first thing I did when my son woke up was to question him about the shed. He denied having gone in there for several days, so I made him go outside with me to check it out. That disgusting person(s) had dragged several of my husband's vintage electronics to the front near the door as well as a huge kick drum. The thing that really caught my eye was that he had dumped several plastic crates filled with Christmas ornaments, stockings and other decorations onto the floor, tossing the empty containers willy nilly. It made me sick to my stomach, knowing that he had gone through our things. It's in so much disarray that I can't even be sure if the perp actually took anything.

I live in a pretty small town, in a really nice neighborhood full of busy bodies (of which I am one), and some nights I don't even remember to lock my doors before turning in. Those days are over. I am now faced with the glaring fact that bad people are everywhere, even on my quiet street in my picturesque little town.How I long for the innocence of my former naivety.