Space Invader

When I got up this morning and took my little dog out for a walk, I was greeted by an early, unpleasant surprise: my car had been broken into overnight. It was parked right outside my son's back sliding door, by which I mean it was literally three feet away from his bedroom. Every other night I was at his house (I'm back at my house now), I slept on the sofa, but my back hurt last night and I took him up on his standing offer to use his bed. As far as I can tell, nothing was stolen -- there wasn't really anything of value in there --  but someone had foraged through my things, and the whole experience gave me a super-creeped-out feeling.

I called the police non-emergency number, and when the deputy arrived he admonished me for not locking my car doors. (When I told him I didn't think I had locked my doors, he rolled his eyes so far back into his head I wasn't sure he would be able to bring them forward again.) I usually do lock my doors, but I guess I thought with the car being so close to the apartment and the parking lot being well-lit, it would be fine. At that point I didn't know whether anything had been stolen, but he didn't even check. I was more concerned that I may have had papers with personal information in there. He told me I didn't need to file a police report. Instead he gave me an incident number and told me I could use that if I had a problem later. I wanted to ask him why he was being such an ass and tell him I was probably the nicest person he would deal with all day, and that it was only 8:00 in the morning, so it wasn't likely that I was taking him away from some serious crime. I didn't see the point in saying any of that, so I told him I was sorry if I had wasted his time, and I might have been just a little sarcastic, because he was pissing me off a little bit.

He changed his tune then. He said I wasn't wasting his time and that the area around those apartments tended to have problems with transients from time to time who went through the parking lots checking for unlocked car doors. I said, in my sweetest voice, that he knows that because he works there and, I presume, lives somewhere relatively close. How would I know that? He didn't exactly apologize for being a jerk, but he was a smidge kinder. I told my son after the cop left that I know those fellows have to deal with scumbags all day, but you'd think they could adjust their attitude when dealing with nicer people. My son just shrugged. All of that behind me, along with a pleasantly uneventful drive home, I am now fixing dinner in my own kitchen, my locked car pulled safely up in my driveway.