Crime! (And Punishment?)

None of this would have happened if I hadn't made Kristin drive Kate and I to her own birthday dinner, but sometimes I don't feel like driving and I made a lame excuse about how it's cruel and unusual punishment to make people ride in the back seat of a VW Beetle, and that's how Kristin ended up driving and my car ended up sitting behind her residence hall where I've parked dozens of times with my bag on the front seat and my iPad fortunately in Kristin's office, because I like to use it in front of her to taunt her and watch her seethe with jealous rage.

When we got back from dinner Kate got in her car and I walked to my car... and my bag was gone. So was my iPod charger. And all of the change that's usually in my cupholder. After Kristin and I figured out that my bag wasn't in her office and that it hadn't been tossed in the dumpster behind Clement after someone figured out that there was nothing of value in it besides an eight year old cell phone, we called the police to report that my car had been broken into, but it turns out that it wasn't.

Instead, my car is just broken. Again. After I spent $1800 on it last month.

See, when I push the button on my key, the car beeps and the passenger door locks with a satisfied thump, but I never noticed until tonight when my bag walked off that at some point recently the driver's door has stopped locking. Fantastic. I can't even imagine what that costs to repair.

Back to the story, though, we were sitting in Kristin's office waiting for the police when they called and asked us to come out to the car. I thought they were just going to take the report, and that maybe I'd be able to get a free new phone from Verizon with it, but when we got to the car the policeman said, "If you'll get in the car, we can take you over to identify your property and have it returned."

That's some speedy police work.

Kristin and I were kind of shocked and amazed, but it turns out that two guys had hit a number of cars, stealing whatever they could carry including a few hundred dollars worth of golf clubs, and the police stopped them because they looked suspicious. After driving a couple of blocks, I was asked to come over to identify my bag in front of about ten cops and a number of cop cars. (I don't know the exact number. I thought seven, but Kristin insists that she counted them and that there were more.) Before they could give me my bag, I had to identify enought things in it before they opened it for my identification to stand up in court.

"There's a really old flip phone."

"Can you identify any of the numbers in it?"

"It probably has three missed calls from Kristin?"

"Yeah, we talked to your Dad on it."

"Shit."

I love my parents, but I guarantee that there was a good hour of full on freakout that may or may not still be going on. They get wound up kind of easily, especially when it's late at night and the police call them to talk about their children, but I think that probably happens to most parents.

"What else was in the bag?"

"Um... a Talking Stick magazine. A laminated list of hall director phone numbers. I think that's blue or turquoise? Some papers. A wooden pen from Colonial Williamsburg with my name carved into it. My mom bought that. A spare Volkswagen car key. Oh, and a couple of comic books in plastic bags on white boards."

I didn't realize that they were taping all of that until the officer spoke into his microphone: "Confirm that victim has identified magazine, comic books, and personalized pen."

They spent about twenty more minutes writing things up, taking information from me, and then finally giving me my bag and sending me home. I'm supposed to call next week to get a copy of the police report, and then a detective is supposed to call me about pressing charges.

And that was the story of how Kristin's birthday dinner ended with the two of us sitting in a cop car.