Yesterday, the following things happened to me in quick succession:
THING THE FIRST: I DESTROYED my deadlifting personal best at the YMCA.
THING THE SECOND: At almost the exact same time, someone smashed my car open and stole my stuff.
THING THE THIRD: I found a dollar on the ground! An entire dollar bill! Right there, on the ground!
So things are pretty much a wash. All is well; I feel very up to the task of filing claims and replacing what was taken and getting my car fixed up, but I am going to be running around today getting glass shards removed from the inside of my car door and so on, so I will not be here to provide you with the content you so desperately crave. Instead, please feel free to share any stories about the following:
1. Any weight-lifting personal bests and how you achieved them/how much pizza and candy you ate afterwards (three pieces of deep dish and a bunch of Twizzlers, for me)
2. The weirdest thing anyone’s ever stolen from you
3. How great it feels to find a dollar
Talk amongst yourselves! Back soon.
Tags: bad things happen to me, cars, everything’s coming up malhouse, meta, open thread
I’m sorry Mallory, that sucks a lot.
Weirdest thing anyone has ever stolen from me: The entire hardtop of my Jeep, but nothing else in that Jeep. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and hearing some kind of shattering noise, but I lived near a university and just figured it was some drunk ass breaking a bottle. Nope. It was my passenger-side window. And then I was extremely confused the next morning as to why my Jeep no longer had a top on it. I actually called my parents and asked them if they had, for some bizarre reason, decided to take my Jeep out for a topless ride.
It was for several minutes incomprehensible to me that someone had stolen my hardtop, in part because I was a sheltered suburban baby, but also because it’s such a weird fucking thing to steal.
Anyway, hope you get all that glass cleaned up. Glass shards suck.
That sucks. I had a soft-top, with vinyl windows that closed with zippers and velcro. I woke up one morning to find that someone had slashed through the vinyl with a knife to get inside. Were the zippers too confusing? Was the velcro too complicated?
The only thing they stole? My rear view mirror.
When I was a junior in college, my car was seriously broken into from behind my dorm. This wasn’t a “I left my car unlocked and they took my parking pass” kind of thing, they literally cut my door handle open, stole my aftermarket stereo, $1000 worth of legal CDs, and my portable battery charger. I tried to file a campus police report but because it was likely a pro, they couldn’t get anything.
The only solace I was able to get out of it was that they actually left the faceplate for the radio on my driver’s seat, so that even if they tried to sell the damn thing, it wouldn’t work.
Break-ins are bullshit and I am so, so sorry that happened.
Randomly wondering – do people still steal radios / music systems from cars?
I had my GPS (a dashtop garmin) and an iphone cord stolen out of my car. (They jimmied the door and didn’t break any glass)
Weirdly, one time I was at a grocery store with my husband and as we were walking out toting a 40-pound sack of rice I started to panic because a cop car was directly behind me writing something, but as it turns out the police officer was just writing me an official Police Notice not to keep the GPS on the dash any more because sometimes they were being stolen. And to be aware.
They’ve been getting stolen A LOT in my neighborhood.
My car’s been broken into 3 times. First two times they took the stereo and cds. The third time they didn’t touch the sound system, but grabbed a bag from the back seat. I’m sure it was someone who thought “Ha! Stupid bitch left her purse in the car!” What they got, however, was a bag full of sweaty belly dance gear. Good luck with the resale value on that! I know the street value of zills is through the roof.
The thing was, when I discovered it, I spent about five minutes looking in stunned astonishment at the broken driver’s side window and the still-in-the-dashboard stereo, unable to comprehend what had happened–broken window, okay; stereo still in car? WTF? When someone breaks into your car, THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE THE STEREO! That’s the rule! That’s why people break into cars! I had frankly forgotten that I’d left my dance bag in the car so it wasn’t until after I had called the insurance company about getting the window replaced that I realized what had been stolen.
Someone jimmied the lock on my husband’s car and started to pry the stereo out and then just left it there. They were probably interrupted, but I like to think they realized what a shitty stereo it was and moved on to greener pastures.
Interestingly the only thing I’ve ever had stolen from my car was just the faceplate for my aftermarket stereo (not the stereo itself) and some loose change (but not the bag of quarters I leave in there for meters)
Someone broke into my dad’s car once, apparently broke the stereo faceplate trying to get the stereo out, and then just gave up and left with half the faceplate. Lazy-ass car burglars.
I do like that you had to specify “legal CDs.” If anyone had broken into my car in college they would mostly have gotten burned live Phish recordings and a bunch of electro/dance mixtapes with badly-sharpied info.
But also that sucks and I’m sorry 🙁
nobody has stolen much from me besides bike lights, because jerks.
gf’s house got broken into a couple years ago before I moved in, somebody stole her fancy messenger bag and grandma’s wedding ring. they strike me as polite robbers though, they didn’t break anything, and they went through her stuff but then were like “er, those are sex toys, I will leave those alone.”
find a dollar is super exciting. one time I found $20, and I felt some spasms of guilt, but I decided since I found it outside a yacht store that that was wealth redistribution.
BIKE LIGHTS! Now I have to keep my bike light in my house, and remember it when I go biking, which obviously means I am going to crash some night and my mangled body will be found in a ditch three days later.
Once someone stole my bike light so I replaced it by duct-taping a flashlight to my handlebars. The next day I went outside and someone had stolen the flashlight. WHY?
Because hey, free flashlight!
Stupid thieves.
I am very paranoid about riding without lights, which means I have spent some serious $$$ getting replacement lights over forgetting my lights at home in the winter.
Which sucks, but at least I don’t ride in fear? And I haven’t been creamed yet? So I guess I’m okay with it.
yeah bike lights disappear all the time, but they tend to be the €2 for front and back kind so it’s mostly just annoyance that I don’t have them walking home.
I am sure someone will steal my bike lights sooner or later, but I try to get the kind that are a pain in the ass to screw on so I know that at least they had to go to some effort.
I’ve had my bike wheel and seat stolen from different bikes on different days. So frustrating 🙁
That sucks!
When I was doing some volunteer work in an African Nation and we used bikes to get to our sites I told my coworker that, in the US, people steal bike tires and leave the frame if it is chained up. He thought it was the funniest thing and it didn’t make any sense to him. I don’t know if it was just that region, but people would only use a lock that locks the tires to the frame rather than locking it to anything. Someone one time actually just walked off with one of our bikes, which was definitely locked.
I have no weightlifting personal bests, but may I brag that my baby cousin won for her weight class in a power lifting competition this week? She deadlifted something like 325lbs, even though she is a wee little woman, who buys her shoes in the kids’ department. The human body is amazing!
good god I’m in awe of your cousin! that’s ASTOUNDING.
I like to imagine that your baby cousin is ACTUALLY a baby, or a toddler, and that this buff little toddler is rocking out at some power lifting competitions. Hilarious!
Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N6q9S1eS2A
On Valentine’s Day a few years ago me and my guy were taking a walk. We were completely broke at the time (like, maybe $5 in our shared account and no cash) and lo and behold I spotted a $20 on the ground outside a diner. We thanked the Chicago streets and celebrated our love and luck over burnt eggs and fries.
My friend and I found twenty bucks on Queen Street once and promptly went to the Horseshoe and spent it on a pitcher. We were already intoxicated. The Horseshoe was boring. Thus, we decided to take the pitcher with us and go to a park around the corner. Then the cops saw us on the sidewalk carrying a pitcher. The end.
Another time the same friend was driving the car and I was in the passenger seat. She suddenly stops in the middle of the road, throws it in park, unbuckles her belt, and gets out. I, and the friend in the backseat, maybe shout a little.
She bends over in front of the car, in the middle of the road (disappearing from sight, because she’s tiny), then stands up and waves a twenty at us.
I think that time we got fancy midday martinis at a place that was kind of disappointing.
nooooo 🙁
here’s something uplifting: a friend just informed me of a monthly event where 6 writers converge upon a bookstore, compete in writing erotic fanfiction of a pre-determined book (animal farm! the giver! the next one is going to be stephen king’s christine!) and then it is read aloud by a shakespearean thespian and the audience votes. it sounds amazing and i can’t wait to go.
WHERE
in san francisco, at the booksmith in the haight. it’s called “shipwreck” and i think they might do it in NY too?
Rats, far away from me in either direction. It sounds fantastic, though!
“in san francisco”
YESSSSSSSS!
here is an event/ticket link to the next one! http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/809600
Thank you! I just sent the Booksmith link to all my friends with an accusing “did YOU know this was going on?” email. We’ll all be there!
They have a Tumblr!
http://shipwrecksf.tumblr.com
From The Giver fan fiction, first line: “Eleven years had passed since Jonas escaped the village, crashed his sled into a stone wall, and died.”
that does sound like an entertaining evening out!
Yes! I’ve been to one of their events in NYC, and it was so much fun! The book was The Great Gatsby and the winning story was about the yellow car (naturally). Cecil Baldwin of Welcome to Night Vale was the narrator and most of the competing writers also work on WtNV as writers and producers. I bought a tote bag, and every time I look at it I feel happy and tingly and a little uncomfortable.
Haha. I just commented that the NYC one was awesome. Clearly we should be friends.
We should! Mentioning an erotic fan fiction competition is a great way to measure potential friendship. Amused or intrigued=bffs.
I wanna go to a NYC one! Please gives us a heads up when it happens again!!
There’s actually one next month (10/7) at the Bell House in Brooklyn!
Yes! That is like 1/2 a block from my house. I’ve been several times and it is AWESOME. I can’t remember if we’re going in October, but I’ll mention it in the Friday open threads whenever I’m going.
I went to the one they did in NY. It was SO AWESOME.
way late to the game on this one, but thanks for the heads up. that sounds amazing.
yes! you should totally join in!
I stumbled across this on accident once. The book that month was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Talk about a confusing 15 minutes. But it was awesome and the crowd was very enthusiastic.
i’m sad i only learned of this after willy wonka, because that seems like it would be INCREDIBLE.
Ugh, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Finding money is kind of magical–I once found a five dollar bill, and I saved it for something special that cost exactly $5 (can’t remember what right now, though.) The most exciting thing that happened in this vein recently though was winning a special buffalo coin, worth FIFTY DOLLARS. It was a scratch-off thing from a car dealer, though, and I didn’t really want to go in, say “Can I have my buffalo coin, please?” and walk out.
also one time i thought i found a twenty (A TWENTY) on the ground and i was elated until i tried to pay with it at a corner store and the stoned teenager behind the counter was like “you playin me right” and i realized it was fake with two face sides and an advertisement printing on it 🙁
aw damn having to save face in front of the stoned teen 🙁
ughhh it was so humiliating!
to my credit, i was trying to buy a baby bottle of wine and i was already a little bit tipsy, so, even humiliated as i was, i think my reaction of covering my face and muttering “fuuuuuck” passed muster with him.
Good things, though, because my Pollyanna side MUST COME OUT TO PLAY! I’ll pick three:
+ An actual interesting person has been talking to me on OK Cupid! I’m excited! Maybe I am not hopeless after all. I talked to my ex last night and he said that he met his new girlfriend on “a dating website” so hell, if he can find someone else, I can too.
+ The most exciting news to me, probably not to many others: Finnegan Wake was chosen as the fan vote Monster High doll! This is awesome and exciting because HE IS IN A WHEELCHAIR. YAY VISIBILITY. YAY DIVERSITY. Now let’s work on getting a fat girl in the line, ok?
+ I was in the field for work all morning and sunshine makes me happy!
Okay, that’s all. Anyone else feel like playing along?
I’ll play!
+ I got a new job this week! After nine months of active and heartbreaking job searching! It’s with a company that talks, extensively and publicly, about how much they value their employees and actively work to make their employees’ lives better, and that is going to be such a complete switch from where I am now I am anticipating having whiplash for the first couple weeks.
+ that counts for two
+I learned about the Big Fluffy Dog Rescue yesterday, which is just what it says on the tin. If any of you have been looking for the dog version of Jareth from Labyrinth, they have one for you:
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW JOB!!!!!!!!!!!! AND ALSO OH MY GOD THAT DOG
RIGHT?? also THANKS
EPWORDSNATCHER! I’M SO HAPPY FOR AND PROUD OF YOU! YAY NEW JOBS! YAY BIG DOGS! YOU ARE THE BEST!
OH MY GOODNESS BIG FLUFFY DOGSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
(I am home sick today being cuddled by my big not-very-fluffy dogs and now the only thing needed to make me well is a big fluffy goofy boy dog for them to gang up on and to use as a cuddle-blanket). Was that coherent?
Despite the Cough of Doom, being home sick is actually pretty pleasant! I am in bed by our big window with lovely autumn light and a tree-top view instead of looking at spreadsheets. Husband has upped his cuddle game to master levels, and brings me tea in bed.
Hooray for dog cuddles! You should get them a Big Fluffy Dog as a friend.
I hope your Cough of Doom is improved soon!
JOB!! That counts for 3, from the sounds of it, but the dog is a definite bonus.
Well done, you. You deserve to be vociferously valued!
Thanks! I couldn’t not share that big fluffernutter with you guys. He’s in New Jersey, someone adopt himmmmmm.
PUPPIEEEEEES look at this one: https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/30280278
Poo, the picture code isn’t working for me but click the link and look at that doofy face!
SUCH FLOOF
edit: OMG TAIL:
So happy for you! Hooray for new job! I can’t believe I just typed two exclamation points in one comment. Hell, in one day. Just so excited for you.
I’m honored! Thanks! (look, I’m exclamating all over the place too. What is going on.)
HIP HIP HOORAY EMPLOYMENT AND FLUFFY DOGS!!!!
YAY! GOOD JORB!
Coach Z’s voice has been in my head all week. I had to restrain myself from telling my mother that I got the jeaorb.
When I was hired at my current place of employ, my parents were on vacation in North Carolina without us. I called them and put them on speakerphone and said that very thing, because they both watched Homestar Runner with us and would get it. They did.
You did a great job, Hamstray.
This comment has been consistently making me smile all afternoon. I think it’s the Hamstray that did it. Thank you <3
Aww! There’s nothing that a little Homestar won’t help. 😀 You are quite welcome!!
Yay congrats, that sounds great! Also, my friend got her pup from Big Fluffy Dog and he is a gigantic lovable dummy.
Congratulations on job! That counts for something close to infinity, really.
High fives for Pollyannas! I’ll play!
*I made an EXCELLENT cup of coffee this morning.
in a text, apropos to nothing, and I said “Oh no have you been captured by Charybdis???” and now I’m spending the rest of my workday daydreaming about how I would dress up like Xena and save him from seamonsters
*It has been nice and quiet at work so far, and patients all seem to be cheerful and relatively healthy (possibly this is due to sunshine)
*I’ve read “Sultana’s Dream” twice already, and my good mood only increases with each read.
*Dudefriend sent me
Excited about your exciting OKC prospect! Keep us updatedddd!!!
A+ response to that swirlygig thing, and that sounds like an excellent way to spend an afternoon. Girlfriend points out the wazoo.
Ooh, solidly excellent! It’s always good to have a strategy for sea monster rescue. The CDC needs to get on that.
And I certainly will! He took the Pokémon bait I had in my profile and we have been talking about video games and stand up comedy (which apparently he does??) so fingers crossed!!!
OOOOH ME.
+ After two and a half months I have FINALLY found an apartment and will be picking up the keys on Monday!
+ My friend who I haven’t seen in months is coming down tomorrow to help me finish packing and pick out a couch!
+ This afternoon at work I get to dress up like a pirate because apparently we’ve been doing Talk Like a Pirate Day at the library for three years and never had any lady pirates before? (Last year I heard a mom tell her little girl, “I don’t know if there were any girl pirates,” and I had to interrupt. I am not a children’s librarian, but PIRATE ROLE MODELS FOR ALL.)
Finding a dollar feels pretty good, but finding more than a dollar causes me to panic. I found a ten-dollar bill in the subway station once; by the time I walked it over to the station attendant (who looked at me like I’d lost my mind), my blood was pounding in my ears.
Sorry about your stuff and, perhaps more so, your broken window. It’ll be a pain to get that fixed!
I once had a laptop stolen from a tea shop, which isn’t so weird except that I was standing just a few feet away (back turned) and there was a tableful of people sitting so close I felt pretty sure I wouldn’t have to ask them to watch my stuff while I was getting tea. I felt really dumb until the tea shop owner told me a few days later that other shop owners in the neighborhood had been reporting thefts; the art store owner had her laptop stolen from right next to her while merely looking in the other direction. I felt slightly less disgruntled that my adversary was so worthy.
Definitely read that as “blood was pouring out of my ears” and I was like, “Whoa.”
I am super paranoid about having my stuff stolen while I’m nearby or just gone for two minutes, and mostly I try to convince myself that I’m overreacting, but then I read stories like yours and the paranoia re-ups.
Oh me too! I found a $20 once (or something equivalent – this was in grad school so it would have been pounds) and it freaked me out. Well, even more cause it was in the student union and I knew it was probably another poor student and no one wants to just lose $20.
Sounds like your computer was stolen by Mr Invisible or something. Still sucks, though.
Oh man, that (tea shop laptop theft) is rough!
One time my friend was withdrawing $20 from the ATM and it spat out $40 and now every time I make an ATM withdrawal I’m convinced that today is the day it’ll happen to me.
I got an extra $13 in cash back at a Kroger U-Scan once. Miracles happen.
Once at a self-check I got $20 cash back and accidentally left it there and made someone else’s day. Also one time at that same checkout I found a guy’s wallet and left it at the courtesy desk, so I figure I’m due some grocery karma.
You are due one of those times where you’re going up to buy something really expensive and it rings up super cheap and they just wave it through.
I paid for a bag of chips with a $20 and it spat out the correct coin change AND four $5 bills. This was back when the machines were just starting to get installed in grocery stores. I took the money up to the attendant and she just looked at me like I was nuts, said “It’s fine,” and waved at me to get out of the store. That bag of Tostitos Hint of Lime chips was the best ever!
That’s definitely happened to me before. It was my birthday and I was gonna buy dinner for my broke friends, so I went to withdraw $40 in cash from the ATM and found $120 in the basket after the transaction had completed. The place was deserted when I got there so there was no one to ask, and we upgraded our dinner spot to a much more decadent place.
An ATM once stole 20 euros from me! There was some weird plastic thing over the slot and all the money got jammed–I pulled off the plastic and yanked most of it out but 20 remained in the machine. It was in France and it wasn’t even my local bank, so that missing 20 euros turned into multiple visits to the branch for them to photocopy all of my personal identification and a few formal letters that addressed me as “Monsieur” and assured me that they took the matter very seriously. It’s still a creepy mystery to me why there was a random piece of plastic over the slot.
I left quick-release stirrups in new leathers in my dad’s passenger seat one evening, and someone broke in, rifled through the glove compartment, cleared out the loose change, took the stirrups…and put the stirrups in the trunk of the car, evidently too weirded out to keep them.
Hurrah for liftin’, boo for thiefin’.
I hope they left the leathers, too!
UGH. That sucks, Mallory!
Weirdest thing anyone’s ever stolen from me: The purple, blue, and pink gel pens that on of the kindergarteners I was a monitor for gave me as a gift for all my hard-working monitorship (and organizing of freeze tag) (I was in fifth grade). Juicebox left me with yellow, green, and orange, and you can’t even see those when you write with them.
In freshman year of college: My BRAND NEW FANCY BRAS. (Light blue with polka dots, blue and green plaid, that I bought ON SALE for five bucks each which makes it even worse than if I’d paid a lot for them because I was SO PLEASED WITH FINDING THAT DEAL.)
This happened to me too! I was in 3rd grade, and I had a huge pencil box full of all sorts of pens and erasers and COOL SCHOOL SUPPLIES and the super mean girl in front of me stole ALL of it, and then separated it out so I couldn’t prove it. I was so mad! I’m still so mad!
ME TOO.
When I was a dirtbag teen, I was mad enough remembering that to go to Genovese and STEAL A PACK OF GEL PENS. Except I was a dirtbag teen, and also kind of a doofus, so instead of just stealing the damn gel pens, I opened the pack and took them each out individually and LEFT THE MANGLED PLASTIC CONTAINER IN THE AISLE. The poor girl who worked there was like “Did you take this?” (she was maybe two or three years older than me) and I was like “Nope *whistles, stares at the ceiling*” and she was just like
“-______________________- fine whatever go away”
I was mad about it some more a few months ago, but this time I ordered a 50-pack of gel pens from Amazon, ’cause I’m at least a little bit less of a dirtbag now
This story has awoken a memory I thought I’d forgotten but I guess I’m still bitter about! So, second grade or so, our school supply list includes 10 pencils, and my saintly mother allows me to spend an absurd amount of time picking out my 10 favorite. First day of class, everyone is required to keep one of their pencils and put the rest in a communal box for everyone to pull from when they lose their pencil. I am conscientious enough that by the time I need a new one there are only BASEBALL pencils left. All those pencil-losers got their pick of the best ones! Ugh, is this how misguided wealthy conservatives feel as they pay their taxes?
Thefts in grade school are the worst. When I was in 9th grade some girl stole my Dead Can Dance cassette. I saw her with it and told the teacher to try to reclaim it and they said they couldn’t take it away because I couldn’t prove it wasn’t hers. Like anyone else in that hick ass town listened to Dead Can Dance. *scorn*
I had a few t-shirts stolen from my college’s laundry room. The two I remember were a faux vintage shirt with a peace sign and the phrase “Back by Popular Demand” and a Death Cab t-shirt. I liked both of them a lot. In conclusion, people are the worst.
Stories like that are why if someone had crap in the dryer and I needed it, that I fucking folded it before putting my things in. There was a floor meeting once and someone was like “hey, uh, which one of you is folding laundry when taking it out of the dryer?” and I sheepishly raised my hand and the guy was like “thanks, man, I’d never remember if it weren’t for you”
GOODY TWO SHOES YEAAAAH
Someone once grabbed my Boots plastic bag, but all that was in it was sanitary pads.
I can’t help but think they were probably disappointed.
Either that or really, really relieved.
*giggle*
When I lived in a party house with five other people right after college, our garage got broken into. There was a lot of stuff in that garage but the only thing they stole was a really old boombox. My roommate’s cousin had his truck in there because he was hiding it from the repo man, and the person had slashed the seats. They also spray painted “Fukk white people!” on the inside of the garage door, which seemed like an odd choice, and left behind a leather jacket with an eagle airbrushed on the back.
Left behind, as in, did not steal the leather jacket with eagle, or left behind, as in you didn’t have such a jacket, and then after the intrusion, you did?
I’m imagining the latter and they left it as a calling card.
Yes, the jacket ostensibly belonged to our thief and he either forgot it or left it as payment for the boombox. The next day my roommate’s boss, a welder, nail-gunned the jacket to a pole in the alley without telling any of us. We made him take it down as soon as we were aware.
There are some people with strange boundary issues in your life
those are strange vandalism choices
Omg an eagle jacket, did you keep it?
That was a pretty magical garage now that I look back on it. One time we had a garage sale in there and one of only like three people who came was this older guy who ran a really small and shitty gym around the corner and who always wore camouflage pants in various colors. He bought a copy of Romeo + Juliet on VHS.
“What is a dead-lift?” #dowagercountess
One time, a few weeks ago, I totally found a crisply folded $20 bill on the sidewalk. BLAMMO. I had to stop and look around and seriously consider running after anyone who might have dropped it but then there was totally no one there but me and a squirrel and I’d be damned if I let that squirrel take the money, so I took it. But not before I instagrammed it. I felt immediately shameful about instagramming it, though. Not about taking it.
I just assume all money on the ground is probably a religious tract. Have you seen those? “Haha! You thought you found a fortune. Concern yourself with laying up treasures in heaven, you greedy pig.” (I’m paraphrasing.) I still check, though.
I’m in Chicago, and I’ve DEFINITELY seen those around town. *facepalm*
When I was in middle school, I found a change purse lying on the sidewalk, in front of a house on my street, and, since the garage door was open and there was a gentleman working on something, I took it over to ask if someone had dropped it. And he was like, “no no, take it. Look inside.” There were a few coins and a little slip of paper that read “mony is temporary. Christ is eternal.” I still feel vindicated, whenever I’m visiting my parents and walk by that house, that I foiled the assumptions of their stupid evangelism scheme. Also, “mony is temporary” has been a catchphrase in our house ever since.
You did the right thing to keep it from that squirrel. If they get their filthy paws on some capital they will destroy us all and bury us in nuts.
AGREED. There’s no telling what horrors would await us in a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed dystopia.
Honestly, could squirrels really do more damage to the economy than finance bros already have? I say bring on a cashew based currency!
A dead-lift, dear countess, is an Olympic lift. I have done them and, now that my knee is better, will do them again. They are a one of my favorites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlift
Good heavens. I rather don’t think I could handle that.
Well, technically, it’s not Olympi…
*murders inner pedant with a shovel*
Hooray for deadlifts! They are excellent and everyone should do them all the time.
I, too, have an inner pedant and it cannot be killed…even with a shovel. I bow to your inner pedant, and will think of you when I hit the weight room again.
Another time someone broke into a different Jeep of mine, and there wasn’t much to steal in there, but they sure rifled through my stuff a whole lot. I think maybe they made off with the change in my ashtray? Maybe some CDs? Nothing I’d miss. But the best part was that they left a matchbox with the virgin of Guadalupe sitting perfectly centered on the driver’s seat. Cool fucking calling card, jackass! You and the Wet Bandits should hang out!
Man, fuck them and fuck all car thieves. Assholes.
One time my car was entered (I must have left the car unlocked, which I never do, but there was no damage, so?) and everything was rifled through, but nothing at all was taken. I felt a little insulted about my music collection, frankly.
That happened to me too! I guess my would-be thieves didn’t want my scratched late 90’s alt rock CD’s. They also left behind a good bit of loose change and the blank checks (!!!) I had in my glove box. As far as I could tell they just went through my stuff, used the cigarette lighter and left it on the seat, then bolted.
My dad’s favorite thievery story is about when some college friends of his had their apartment broken into and pretty badly ransacked….but before the burglars stole the turntable they carefully removed the ABBA record and set it aside.
I do not have concrete proof that this item was stolen, per se, but: when I was in 5th grade, I had an American Girl wallet (slash purse; it had a detachable purse strap!) that contained $25 of hard-earned babysitting money go missing. I am 99.9% sure it was my best friend’s cousin who stole it when they were both over my house but my timid attempt to confront my friend was unsuccessful.
– “Hey, do you think Nikki might have taken my wallet? I don’t even care about the money [LIE]; I just want the wallet back because it was a Christmas gift [true].”
– [vociferous denial]
I did want that $25 dollars back. $25 dollars to an 11-year old in 1995 was a shit-ton of cash, yo.
I flat-out shame-confronted my next-door-neighbor’s oldest son once when he & his brothers were over here playing with my sons, and some cash turned up missing from my oldest son’s room, and next time they were over I was all, “Hey, J, any chance you saw what happened with D’s cash after he was showing you his new bank? Cause he can’t find it now and I’m hoping maybe you saw where he might have put it.”
J denied, and went home pretty soon after that, and came over the next day and disappeared randomly into D’s room, and what do you know? D found his cash that afternoon.
(Maybe it wasn’t J. Maybe it was the other one. Whichever. This was a year or so before next-door and I had a major falling out over my cat, and our kids basically stopped interacting for a while anyway.)
(LIFE IN THE SUBURBS IS FUN, Y’ALL.)
1995 must be cursed for Toasties, because that was the year my neighbor stole a bunch of my Beanie Babies! She’d come over to my house and we’d play with our Beanie Babies and because I was a monster with too many toys, I didn’t notice right away when one or two went missing. But once I was on to her I caught her red-handed. Well, I’m a coward, so I saw her stuff something up her shirt and try to sneak home, but I told me Dad and he went over there and talked to her Dad, and I got my Beanie Baby back. Go Dads! But I know she took more than one! And I am still bitter!
And now I feel like I’ve written Beanie Babies more times than is appropriate and I will slink off to nurse my grudge.
finding money feels like the universe is smiling on you. I found a $50 once in the middle of a forest (?). I was like “welp, this is definitely meant to be mine.”
In college, one of the guys living on the floor below stole about 10 pairs of my underpants from the laundry facilities. He was busted eventually, and I hadn’t noticed it had been happening until he was busted, at which point I realized that, yes, my underpants supply was dangerously low.
And with my divorce this summer, I inadvertantly lost some weight, which is making my pole dance soar – literally. I’m able to do dead-lifts now and am even considering a competition in April since I wasn’t able to do September. Down side: where the fuck are my boobs? (POLE DANCE STOLE MY BOOBS, TRUSTORY) but you can’t have it all right?
When I was in college, somebody stole all the underwear that I had in the dryer. Which, because I wait until I am completely out of underwear to do the wash, was every pair of underwear that I owned except the pair I was wearing. I was so broke it cleaned me out to take the bus to Walmart and buy a 5-pack of shitty off-brand underwear. It was an utter tragedy. I can imagine a perv stealing one pair–but 10? All of them? This is just cruelty.
all 10 AT ONCE? that is completely cruel…
Everyone I know who divorces loses weight. My sister is half my size now, and her divorce isn’t even final. I’ve pointed this out to my spouse, but he contends we should just stay fat and married.
On the one hand, we’re happy and it’s a lot less work to stay married than to divorce.
On the other hand, losing weight by being disciplined is so tedious.
Also, a bunch of people compliment my sister on her weight loss and saying “OVERWHELMING PILES OF SHIT AND STRESS” never goes down very well when they ask how she did it.
Fat and happy > (too) skinny (and boobless) and happy(er than I was in my marriage but still a bit stressed)
Always say yes to a lifting meet. Always. They might be some of the most positive and supportive athletic venues out there.
oh haha! no, I’m looking at pole dance competition. I’ve been able to start dead lifting my body (in pole dance, that means pure lifting into inverted positions without the floor to push off of). But from what I understand, pole dance competitions are also very positive and supportive 🙂
Wow, okay, reading comprehension fail on my part. ^^; That sounds a lot harder than barbell deadlifts!
In college, someone stole my wallet out of my coat at a party – they ultimately dropped my college ID in a field (much to my relief, since they cost $20 to replace) but went on to make some truly weird purchases with my debit card (a guitar and a crate of oranges?). The most hilarious part of the ordeal, though, was actually calling the bank to report my card stolen: after I explained the situation, the support person told me to hold on while she checked my balance, so we could see if any charges had been made yet. She came back a second later, and asked brightly: “Ok, does negative-four-hundred-and-fifty dollars sound right?” NO THAT DOES NOT SOUND RIGHT.
(I got all the money back.)
The only good thing about credit card fraud is seeing the bizarre things people purchase.
Most recently:
a Match.com membership
two memberships to Christian Mingle
several flowers.com orders
a kiddie pool from Walmart
I…almost want to meet that person, honestly.
I feel like I want to meet the oranges/guitar person too, except that my (small midwestern) college town had some weird meth-head residents tucked in among the sweethearts, and there’s too strong a chance the thief would be one of them. (Sidebar: in my sophomore year some kids I knew rented a house that had previously been a meth lab, and although the dangerous chemicals had been cleaned up, the crazy decorations in the basement had not been. Chairs suspended from the ceiling, sculptures made out of baby dolls, precariously-balanced old typewriters. It was chilling.)
One of my coworkers had her purse stolen recently and the person managed to charge $54 at WHITE CASTLE. How? I barely believe that an entire White Castle would cost $54.
Those Christian Mingle singles are getting some sweet florals! Romance is in the air!
One time my dad’s credit card company called to ask if he was actually buying a boat in Finland. Which, no.
I recently got a phone call from my bank because they thought someone had nicked my card and was making weird purchases.
The purchases were all mine.
snort! I love that she asked it brightly.
Toasties, I am changing hearts and minds, and I feel pretty good about myself.
I work in as an engineer, which means I spend all day, every day surrounded by dudes. Up until a few months ago I was the only woman in my division. It’s a thing you get used to, though it’s also occasionally frustrating and infuriating and soul-sucking.
Anyway, about a year ago, a fellow employee was chastising another fellow employee in the cubicle next to mine. I heard the one refer to the other as “like a girl” and, without missing a beat or looking up from my work I responded “because being a girl is the worst thing you can be.” The dude froze and then he turned red and then he left, and I felt really good about myself. An hour later he even came back and apologized and thanked me for calling him out. It was basically the best thing I’ve ever done.
And I know that because this morning another guy I work with came over to my cubicle and recounted this story and told me that he still thinks about it and how awesome I am. So I’m once again up on cloud 9. It’s not a weightlifting best, but it may be a personal misandry best.
Yay! It’s hard to have those moments without being regarded as “That Person” so I am happy for you!
The universe owes you a guilt free fifty on the sidewalk.
you are magnificent
A+ engineering (I am also a software engineer and I feel you. I’m so glad to have moved to a new company where I have more female engineers on my team.)
A+++++++++++++++++ you are a warrior for good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the best thing I have heard all day! Hooray for you!!!! I am also in engineering, lots of dudes, and it’s so hard to speak up like this.
” It’s a thing you get used to, though it’s also occasionally frustrating and infuriating and soul-sucking. ” is pretty much word-for-word a sentence I said to another female engineer at my company (different department.)
That sucks, Mallory, but congrats on the dollar, and the dead-lift best.
The other day, I was leaving self-checkout at Safeway, and I had walked by the scratch-off machine, and thought, “what the hell, buy a dollar scratch-off” and I won 7 dollars. THATS LIKE AN ELEVENTY BILLION PERCENT RETURN, GUYS.
Money I Have Found ( this could be a novel)
$40 that was tucked inside a used US History textbook (!!!)
Two $10 bills in the parking lot at Safeway
$5 on the sidewalk near the Bank of America ATM on G St in Washington DC
A Susan B Anthony $1 coin on the platform of the Metro Center metro platform, Red Line, going toward Maryland
also found – an debit card, which I dropped off at the bank next door
a watch
Things stolen: a case of CDs (who steals CDs? )
A partial roll of quarters I kept for parking meters
A tree peony from my garden (though that may have been deer, but still)
One time someone took the azalea in a pot off my porch. Pretty sure it wasn’t a deer, as the pot would not appeal to deer I don’t think.
Man, I take the DC Metro every weekday and I haven’t found ANYTHING good.
you should write that novel – a series of vignettes, snapshots of your character at various stages, the things she’s going through. Sounds like a great premise!
(all red line trains from Metro Center are going towards Maryland)
I do not believe I have ever found cash on the ground on the Metro, but I have found several SmartTrip cards, all of which I have dutifully either handed in to the station manager or mailed back to Metro after calling to tell Metro that I found it.
I also once found someone’s debit card on the street in Georgetown and called the bank to tell them and mailed it back.
And once had my wallet stolen out of my bag at a bar in Columbia Heights and the morons tried to spend $200 + at CVS, which got declined because I had already cancelled the card by that point. And pretty much every CVS in the District has cameras.
I had a WWJD necklace stolen from me in middle school gym class. It was really ugly in a 90s way (this was 1997) and it had a gross nylon/pleather cord so they probably did me a favor.
When I had a purse stolen the same year, they thieves got $2, a chicken finger puppet and a beloved pocket dictionary. (I’m assuming they stole it for the money, not for Henrietta)
The first wallet I ever owned was stolen out of my purse during class in the ninth grade. I sure hope whatever fellow student took it was pleased with their haul, which was
1. my school ID
2. maybe as much as $2.50, mostly in change
that’s poetic, about the necklace
I totally read that as chicken finger puppet and not chicken finger puppet and I was very excited to learn that those were manufactured.
Somebody felt me a chicken finger finger-puppet.
Two please!
Oh my god! Named after Henrietta from The Hoboken Chicken Emergency?
Named after the chicken from The Chicken Doesn’t Skate. (But yay for the Pinkwaters)
I’m not sure on the statute of limitations before ‘borrowing’ turns into ‘thieving’, but if it’s four years or less, my best friend has totally stolen an entire crate of my books (including a few signed first editions). The only thing saving him is the fact there’s a continent between us.
My grandmother once had a couple dirtbags break into her house and steal her jewelry from the room in which she was sleeping at the time. My grandmother was about 4’10” and 100 pounds soaking wet pretty much all the days of her life, but when she woke up and found them sneaking out of her room and down the hallway, she was still able to scare them witless. It’s one of the many, many reasons I will always be proud I’m related to her.
My cousin did something similar to me. After I moved into my apartment I had some family over for my sister’s birthday. My cousin was looking over my bookcase and as I was cleaning up she held up four or five books and said “hey, I’m gonna borrow these, ok” and left. I donated a bunch of books right before I moved and the books hadn’t been organized yet so I am not totally sure what she took but it’s been five and a half years and I never got them back.
He just posted something on Facebook about how he’s paring down/selling off his book collection, oh no I’m never getting these books back, ever.
Once, on a train, from Warsaw to Berlin my husband had his suitcase stolen while we were sleeping. Luckily I had the money and our nice camera. He figured since the train had not made a stop he might find the thief, so he walked up and down the train looking. He found his suitcase open and the only thing missing were some drugs. Not fun drugs but the antibiotics and anti-diarrhea pills husband’s mother had gotten us, just in case. I am sure they were disappointed when they found out what they had gotten.
DO THEY NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE?
That was my thought too!! “No. No one does this to Mallory and gets away with it. Summon the forces of misandry.”
Not only ignorant of Who is Mallory, but fatally unaware of her vast and loyal Misandry Army.
I was pleased the day I benched 95 lbs for my reps, but I didn’t realize it was the end, and my goal was 100 lbs, so I doubt I celebrated with pizza or candy. (It was years ago, like six or seven of them. Now I am weak.)
I can’t think of anything all that weird that’s been stolen from me, but last time my apartment was burgled, the laptop and one of the cameras they took were both broken. SO THERE!
I don’t remember the last time I found a dollar. If I see change on the ground, I usually leave it, because I figure a child or homeless person will find it later and get a lot more joy out of it than I will.
In high school I once found a $20 while walking to school. I friend had fronted me $18 a few days before to buy a ticket to a drum corps show and I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay them back before the show actually happened. It was a nice sign from the universe and I got to sit next to my friend at the show with peace of mind.
Here’s something cheery I can share.
I was horribly shy and awkward as a teenager (like everyone else). Strangely enough, as a child, I had boundless confidence and no cruel insult could dampen my spirits. Then puberty punched me in the face and I became a cliche.
Anyway, due to growing older and constantly putting myself out of my comfort zone I have changed a lot. I realized how much during an exchange at work:
Me: said something funny
Everyone: laughs
Co-worker: You should do stand up comedy or improv
Me: Oh god no! I’d get stage fright
Co-worker: You? I highly doubt that
I have no desire to ever do stand-up or improve, but that exchange totally made my day and made me feel better about myself.
Oh no I’m sorry!
1. I did 150 squats in a day last week. That was pretty great.
2. When I was on a bus in Spain someone stole my backpack from the undercarriage, with my laptop and all my study-abroad papers and such, which was terrible. Luckily no one in Italy (where I was studying) cares about things like “official papers.”
3. I found a $20 in a coat pocket once and almost cried.
If I did 150 squats in a day my legs would come detached from my body. I’m happy if I get in 20. Holy crap.
Regarding No. 3: before I pack my winter gear away for the season, I slip a twenty into a pocket then promptly forget about it. Come time for a jacket, there’s the twenty! I’m always surprised and delighted every single damn time.
Oh, yes, the coat-pocket money is always such a relief! Back when I had a proper coat closet—and when ATMs/point of purchase scanners were scarcer—I used to seed the pockets of my coats with fives and one magical twenty when I was feeling flush, so I could go scavenging through later when times were leaner. (When I smoked, I also stashed away at least one pack of cigarettes in a coat pocket. When you’re desperate, you don’t care how stale they are.)
Ugh SPAIN. I seriously think everyone I know who has been to Spain has had something stolen. My wallet was stolen in Madrid and I didn’t even realize it until I was trying to board the plane back to London.
(But other than that Spain is great.)
This is either the weirdest, or maybe more horrifying: I was in middle school and out of town visiting my grandparents with my mom and dad. My older brothers were at home, and threw a party. Someone stole a box of documents from under my parents’ bed – which included my birth certificate.
Someone broke into my car on the hope that something worthwhile would be in my glove box, well joke was on them! All that was in there was trash tissues and old CDs. They stole nothing (but indirectly stole about $180 since I had to get my window replaced)
Ladies a really cool awesome amazing work thing happend for me this wk and as I was in a work-sadness-desert for like Oh, IDK– YEARS it is extraordinarily significant! To celebrate I bought a cute skirt! And 4 kinds of nail polish! CRUSH THE PATRIARCHY UNDER THE HEELS OF YOUR LEFT SHOE
Every time I see money on the ground I am convinced some dirtbags have attached fishing line to it and are hiding in the bushes waiting for me to try to grab it so they can pull it away. So I always stop for a second and consider the environment but I always go for it in the end.
Step on it, then bend down to grab it. That should defeat any Bugs-Bunny cash-on-a-hook jokery.
This, no joke, happened to a friend of mine at the beach this summer. A group of kids were sitting on a stoop and had attached a dollar to fishing wire.
So the fear is real
I had this happen to me once at a Phish show and my state of mind was such that I thought “this money is leading me to a pile of MORE MONEY!!” and followed it for a few humiliating seconds until one of my friends stepped in to rescue me.
Agh once I was like 7 years old and visiting Dollywood, and I bent down to pick up a quarter, but it was GLUED to the ground and then water squirted out of a fencepost ONTO MY FACE and some dude’s voice came out of a speaker and started making fun of me IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY! I was embarrassed and horrified, and this was apparently a park-sponsored activity, DOLLY HOW DARE YOU
MONEY: I once found a $20 and a lip gloss at the park and while I threw the lip gloss away, I used the $20 to go to lunch and it was fantastic. My mom, however, is the queen of finding money. She has all my money-finding luck and some other people’s, too. Once she was at a beach in Michigan and found a whole trail of strewn dollar bills–it was, like, $50 all together in $1s and $5s. She just Finds Money.
THIEVERY: I actually had a rosary stolen from me while I was at church. I left it on the pew and it was gone when I got back from Communion. I was quite upset for a while, since I got it for my First Communion and it had a lot of sentimental value, but I figured if someone needs a rosary badly enough to steal one they probably need it more than I do and I hoped it did them some good.
If anyone else would like to discuss the dozens of ways in which their week has SUCKED ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT ROCKS, we can do so here. Pretty much every day so far this week my work has made me want to lay my head down on my desk and cry bitter tears.
Oh no. I’ve been reading your posts all week and feeling bad for you. I know that does not help you. I wish I could help you somehow. Just know someone is thinking of you and wishes she could burn down anything that harmed you.
You are so kind
I had my entire car stolen once! Junior? year of high school, I probably forgot to lock a door in the rush to get to my part time job right after school. It was such a pain because my car was my locker at that point and had EVERY SCHOOL BOOK. So I had to go around to every teacher and be like “heyyyy so I need a new textbook.”
(When I walked out of the drug store and didn’t see my car my first instinct was to call my mom and be all “so, who moved my car?” because we are a family who would do that. Mom even called my brother to make sure he was in Santa Barbara and not fucking with me)
Cops found it a few months later, like a mile away. They stole my Giants sweatshirt and the broken radio. But at least I didn’t have to pay for all the stolen/lost textbooks.
In fifth grade my blue/white Magic Card deck was stolen from next to me while I was playing with my red/green deck and I know it was you Andrew Klein, I know it was you
Andrew Klein, we have our eye on you. Our seething, powerful eye.
Horse theft
if he had stolen your red/green deck you could’ve just unsummoned it back with your blue/white deck
oh weirdest things ever stolen: (1) MY 1000 THREAD COUNT DUVET COVER & GOOSE DOWN COMFORTER during the summertime by a moving company in which they took NOTHING ELSE; (2) my entire delicate cycle straight from the dryer in my college dorm. Hope you enjoyed the Victorias Secret PINK line because you prob got half a collection.
Someone stole my favorite volume of a Japanese manga from me in middle school. Like, a volume that was in Japanese. How many people were there even who understood Japanese?? I was so upset. It was literally my favorite book at the time. I had forgotten about this. Now I’m sad.
Today on the subway I found a button with Jane Lane from Daria on it, so that was pretty great.
I have zero weightlifting goals, but I can do this crazy yoga thing, which is fun to frighten people with!
THAT IS SO COOL YOU ARE SO COOL
I can just baaaaarely do camel pose, and every time my yoga lady makes us to headstandy things against the wall, I just curl up into a defeated child’s pose
I can’t do that headstandy thing! I can do a shoulder stand, so I guess that’s my compromise.
I have crappy knees, so I have a lot of trouble with pigeon pose. My yoga lady always goes on and on about how it’s calming and serene and I am like MY KNEES WERE NOT MEANT TO GO THIS WAY
holy shit I bow before you
Sometimes I leave my change in a soda or snack machine, just in case someone doesn’t bring enough for his/her purchase – and then – voila! A dime or nickel is in the change return slot and a nice stranger can enjoy a coca cola or fritos.
Oh, I do enjoy change return slot bonus change!
Yes! Funny thing: it JUST happened to me! I forgot a dime and found one in the slot. HOORAY FOR FRITOS.
One time I pushed the wrong buttons and got a Twix instead of the Barbeque Fritos I was after from a vending machine at a hospital. I can’t eat Twix, so I left it sticking out of the change slot. So much shit was going on at the time (see: this happened at a hospital) that it felt really great to do this small act of kindness for someone else.
I really love this.
I have always thought it would be a really cool prank- like for April Fool’s or frosh week or whatever occasion calls for pranks- to stuff the dispensiary slot in a vending machine with snack-sized candy bars. Free candy for everybody!
Weirdest theft: In college someone stole my grubby sneakers while I showered in the grubby dorm bathroom. I reached over to fetch them from the shower bench and they were GONE. This still bothers me more than the theft of anything valuable, because it had to be motivated by a prank at best, and a secret personal vendetta at worst.
Once some burglars broke into my friend’s apartment, and they left most of his fancy electronics behind, but took a bunch of his action figures. Dirtbags!
Once I found $10 on the sidewalk outside my comic book store, and since it was free comic book day and there were lots of kids around, I worried that it was some eight-year-old’s hard-earned comics budget, so I took it to the register even though it felt a little silly. Turned out it wasn’t from one of the kids but it was the cash the employees had been planning to use to buy tacos for lunch, and I feel like facilitating the acquisition of tacos is a universal Good, so I was pretty pleased with myself.
I’m so sorry about your car!
I’ve been lucky in that every time I have been robbed they haven’t stolen anything particularly substantial, so usually I am more upset about the clean-up or the inconvenience than anything else.
Once when I was young, my mom and infant sister and I went to the Pacific Science Center after school, so I had my child-sized violin in the car. When we came back out of the science center, the car (and my violin, and my sister’s car seat, and etc) had vanished — we ended up holing up in a 7-11 for about an hour until my dad was able to pick us up. (Which was in and of itself an adventure; this was pre-cell phone, and all of this managed to happen while my dad was out of the house running errands, so my mom left something like fifteen increasingly upset voice mails on the home phone and my dad’s work phone. At least the phone calls were free, thanks to the shopkeeper taking pity on my mom.)
They found the car two days later, filled with cigarette butts, containing my sister’s expensive car seat and my violin, with one window smashed in. The sum total of goods stolen was the $5 metal thing used to more securely anchor the car seat to the seat belt, and some spare change that had been kicking around. Thanks, thieves?
A couple of weeks ago, I stopped for my pre-waitressing- shift libation (to which I was not looking forward) and commented off-handedly, “I wish I could walk into work and someone would just hand me a stack of money.” Lo and behold, the very first thing that happened when I got to work was that I found two $20 bills tightly folded together on the floor! I canvassed every customer in the place, and no one had folded money (seriously, every person in the place who had cash had it laid out flat in their wallets).
Also, does it count as theft that one of my earliest memories is of my parents fighting, which robbed me of any sense of familial security?
(shamelessly shoehorning this story in because I really need to share)
The other night, a dude tried to steal… my (lady) date? Me, away from my date? FRIENDS. Story time. This was my second date with this lady. We were at a hookah bar, so we were on the patio sitting on those big outdoor couch things — so, a bit more open than an inside table, but (I thought) still the kind of thing where it was expected that you leave other people alone. There was a group of dudes, one of whom was aggressively stretching his calves (like you do? in public? I guess?) and we kinda laughed at him, which he took as an invitation to come over and show off his socks (yeah, literally) and hit on us SO AWKWARDLY. (His more-observant friends guessed what was up and went inside, like reasonable people.) When he finally asked how we knew each other, we said we met on Tinder… and he didn’t know what that was. After saying “It’s a dating app!” about ten times and my date pulling out her phone and demonstrating what it was, he just looked at us in disbelief and was like… “OHHHH… y’all… y’all are on… a date?!” which, yes. But HE STILL DIDN’T LEAVE. Yep. This man realized we were on a date… and decided what our date needed… was him.
He did eventually go inside, but he came back out when I went to the bathroom (so Lady was alone). Just… what?! Who does that?! Some choice quotes from the evening:
“Oh, you like Shakespeare?” [dramatic voice] “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!… pretty nice, right?”
“Wanna try my new ecigarette? …it’s pretty intense.”
[after being told we were on a date] “Oh, don’t worry, I wasn’t hitting on you! Seriously, I’m not hitting on you. I just want to make friends. I love making friends.”
[re: smoking two cigarettes in a row] “You know, the number one cause of death… is life.” (repeated several times for effect)
Luckily, he fell into the “amusing” rather than “aggressive and creepy” category, and we had a nice laugh about it. But… what? Granted, I usually date men, so maybe this happens all the time, and I guess I can see how two femme ladies at a bar might come across more “friends going out” than “a date,” but who the fuck knows that two people are on a date not only 1. doesn’t leave, but 2. comes back?!
I am a straight lady and I usually *never* get approached by men in bars. Part of it is probably that I have resting asshole face, the other part is probably that I don’t get dressed up to go out or anything. It never really bothered me because I’m not trying to meet the love of my life at a random bar or anything.
ANYWAY, I recently started hanging out with a particular lady friend, who is a lesbian, and whenever the two of us are out alone together we get hit on by straight dudes together NONSTOP. Like, it’s clear that men think we’re on a date and then take it as a challenge or something entitled and disgusting like that. (I have other friends who are lesbians, obv, but for some reason this doesn’t happen with them).
What I’m saying is, I’m sorry that happened to you, and unfortunately I think it’s a Thing that straight dudes do. :/
Your story just kept getting better and better, oh my god. I thought “…pretty nice, right?” was going to be the peak, but no, then “the number one cause of death…is life” happened and I just lost it.
I’m glad dude was mostly amusing! This has not happened to me on any lady dates, but I think that’s because I cannot keep my face from doing anything other than this
when strange dudes talk to me
I’m glad it hasn’t been the case for you! I’m hoping it was an anomaly.
I forgot one of the best things he said: When I told him I was an actor, he corrected me and told me that the correct word was “actress.” This is the SECOND TIME since I’ve been in DC (3 months!) that a douchey guy who was trying to hit on me has done this. Yep. Two separate men who had never met me decided they knew what my job title was.
No, this is absolutely a thing that happens. I bitched about this once and had a straight friend say something along the lines of, “you should just tell them you’re on a date and watch them walk away in shame.”
No. That is not what happens. What happens is that you reveal you’re on a date and a switch gets flipped somewhere, turning you and said date into CERN-quality Asshole Magnets, until you are both trapped rolling at the center of a giant meatball of assholes like some nightmare version of Katamari Damacy.
If it makes you feel any better, back during my dirtbag period (and when I worked in bars) I stole a few lady dates from dudes.
oh oh! wait one more! My graphing calculator went missing in high school and my best friends bf let me borrow one for an exam that wk. The school eventually tracked down the thief– best friends teenage dirtbag bf! Meaning i had borrowed MY OWN CALCULATOR earlier that week.
I have so many questions. How do you track down a calculator thief? How do you get a school to take notice or care at all, much less track a culprit down? Why did he loan you your own calculator? Did he get some sort of thrill out of acting like your benefactor when really it was yours to begin with?
Regardless, I am pleased that he was brought to justice.
Some Library Tweens found a $100 bill on the floor here once! It had clearly fallen out of a book that had been returned and shelved without anyone noticing it. They are nice kids, so they immediately brought it to the desk instead of just keeping it, which means that I was obligated to turn it in to our manager. It was held for a specified amount of time (maybe a month??) to see if someone would claim it, and then when no one did, it was folded into the budget and we used it to buy chalkboard paint for the teen area.
And those kids were up here practically every day, all, “Did anyone claim that money yet? You totally should let us keep it!” I was like, “You totally should’ve kept it yourselves and not said anything, but you didn’t do that, so let this be a lesson to you about cynicism and personal gain.” They are from a pretty wealthy family, so I don’t feel too bad that they morals-ed themselves right out of $100.
The most interesting thing I’ve ever found in a library book was a disconnection notice from three years before. The book was not a popular one.
A friend of my mother’s once found a rasher of bacon acting as a bookmark in a library book.
Cooked or uncooked?
I don’t know, but I should really find out, because that’s the second time I’ve been asked that question today. (It’s stocktake at my library, and we are taking lots of books off the shelves and moving them around. I haven’t found anything interesting so far, but apparently one year a love letter to one of the librarians was found.)
one year a love letter to one of the librarians was found
Awww, that’s…almost cute. Slightly creepy. Depends on the letter, and the book where it was found, I think.
We are a law library, so it was unlikely to be a particularly romantic book.
I once found a completely unused, brand-new credit card from 1988 in a used book. Hey Richard, if you’re reading this, it was in your copy of Zodiac.
I found a bomber joint in a middle-school library copy of Firestarter, a year or two before I was interested in weed myself.
I once found a boarding pass stamped with the name of another grad student in my department (a few years ahead of me, so I didn’t know her personally, but knew her name). The boarding pass was in a used book from Amazon, sold by a supplier in another state. Apparently the book really wanted to come back to our college town?
(V late to join in, blame GMT+1) My friend the Librarian found a dead, flat, dried out lizard in a book once. She made a nest for it out of a cardboard box, which she tastefully decorated. She then displayed it to the children in her storytelling group, whereupon one little girl shrieked “That is mine! Daddy found it in the log pile and I used it as a bookmark!”. Happy ending for little girl and dead lizard.
My friend could easily be a toastie, in that case I hope that she forgives me for telling her story and also for not having been in touch for a while.
Mr. Betsaroo and I once found a $50 (!!!) bill just cold laying on the sidewalk with no one around who it could possibly belong to. We were broke grad students so it was like winning the lottery. We used it to buy an actual sit-down restaurant dinner, and it was glorious.
Ahhh one time a very senior government appointee berated me at work when I was 22 (and also not wrong about the thing he was berating me about!). I cried at work and it was awful. Then later that day on my way to the metro, I found $20. TWENTY whole dollars. It restored the balance of the universe to my underpaid, abused self.
Now I live in Seattle, where people are so passive and polite that they won’t break into your car, they just go up and down streets trying every door handle and taking whatever is in open cars. Car prowling! Who knew this was a thing. I guess I didn’t need all those $4 pairs of sunglasses and cupholder full of change anyway.
My car’s axle fell off on the loop in Chicago during rush hour in the rain. I was doing a roundabout moving home road trip after grad school, so all of my earthly possessions (and a bunch of snacks) were inside. I had the tow truck bring it to a dealership in the ‘burbs and when I went back a few days later to pick it up and get on the road to Madison, WI I realized that some of my earrings were in a cup holder and my GPS was gone. I went to a Target down the street, picked out the cheapest TomTom and when I went to pay– debit card DECLINED because not an hour earlier I had used it to pay for an 1100 dollar repair. I know this is not an unusual thing to have stolen (it had happened to 2 GPSes before which is why I always locked my glove compartment) but still…sucked.
I once bought a sensible but boring wallet from a consignment shop for like $8 and thought it was fine and THEN a few days later I found a $50 bill in it so now I believe it is a magical wallet and I will keep it forever.
magic wallet! Awesome!
Oh man, one time I was squatting during this university athlete conditioning class, and while attempting 5kg past my personal best, the coach gets in my face and says “I want to see your butt touch your heels, then stay there for 5 seconds!” and I did it! I deep squatted with a delay past my personal best on regular squat. Then I tried it again and got completely stuck, oh well.
ALL I WANT TO DO is tell that story, but it’s actually pretty boring to most people, so thank you for giving me this forum! Weight-lifting is fun and no one will convince me otherwise.
Someone once stole my Wikipedia credentials in order to make malicious edits to Mary Poppins (film).
My husband had his identity stolen from his car. He kept his social security card in an “auxiliary wallet” that lived in his messenger bag. He left the bag in the car one night and within a few weeks he was racking up misdemeanors and collecting our tax return in Texas.
It took almost 2 years to get it all sorted out. Don’t leave things that matter in your car!
I don’t have any weight-lifting personal bests, but I started wheel throwing classes this week (that’s the pottery kind, not like… actually throwing wheels) and now it FEELS like I’ve been lifting? Or at least my arms are sore and noodley after manhandling a whopping 1.5 pounds of clay. YEAH.
When I was in college, someone stole my puffy northface jacket (typical, I know) from the cafe in our arts center. Thankfully I only had concert tickets in my pockets, and not my wallet. (I had left it on the back on my chair while I got my lunch, AS ONE DOES when one goes to a rural/small town liberal arts college? As I’d done basically every day for the past 3 years? I felt betrayed, I tell you.) I think that’s actually the only time I’ve ever had something stolen from me.
And I… I can’t actually remember the last time I found a dollar. 🙁
throwing pottery takes muscle! i remember i had the chance to try it in high school and i have the upper body strength of a wet noodle and that clay was throwing me all over the place.
I’ve lost cash before (the worst was when my sis & I were bumming through Europe, very cash-poor, this was pre-Euro so we were being careful about what money we were changing in which country, and on a long leg from Ireland to Spain via ferry then train, I lost our cash allotted to be change to francs / feed us and we didn’t want to break out a travelers check just to be stuck with a bunch of francs we’d have to pay to change again, and then we got dehydrated and were flopping like dirtbags around a train station in Paris and some nice French dude gave us a diet Coke & it was the best thing we’d ever consumed.)
But no one’s stolen from me. I’m knocking on wood as I type this. Sis had several cars stolen, friends have homes broken into, my parents’ home was broken into after we’d all moved out and some sentimental as well as valuable stuff was snatched, but I am the Pollyanna-est Pollyanna that ever Pollyannaed, thanks to the general good fortune when it comes to the lack of violence and crime in my life.
Someone recently broke into my parents’ garage. They didn’t take anything, though, mainly because there’s almost nothing in there except my brother’s 1-ton replica Roman ballista.
SPEAK MORE WORDS ABOUT THIS SIBLING.
Weirdest thing stolen: my clarinet!
It was wooden, recently refurbished with a brand new case and I mistakenly left it inside a locker inside the band room. You know. Where the instruments are. I went back to get it and it was gone. And it’s not like we had a competitive high-school band program and this was some musician jealous of my sweet clarinet. Band didn’t have tryouts and half the people in it were picking up an instrument for the first time and it was a tiiiiny band. The running theory is that it’s unlikely the kid would have even known it was valuable and tossed it just to be a dick.
Because that was definitely a thing kids did–take stuff they had no use for and chuck it somewhere. I have no idea why…
RUNNER UP: my catalytic converter.
did you know that’s a thing thieves can take? I did not know that that was a thing! Apparently they shimmy under your car with a saw, cut it out, and scrap it at a junkyard for the platinum in it but your car makes a horrible noise and is basically broken without it. So that was a super cool discovery! :[
My landlady’s catalytic converter got stolen right out of our parking lot a few weeks ago! Apparently SUV’s and trucks are at worst risk because they are easy to shimmy under. They apparently sell the platinum for like fifty bucks, and the cost to fix is like $1000.
My Philadelphia landlord called me in the middle of the night once. A neighbor had called him to say up-to-no-good characters were sniffing around my car. It was a 1974 VW Bug, so parts were extremely valuable and hard to find, pre-internet as it was. I went out in my nothing but my nightgown carrying my keys and a broomstick to move my car. I parked it 2 blocks away, rendering the tiny thing invisible between a panel van and a bakery truck, and walked back home. My uncle was in my apartment, visiting from his sedate white suburban southern neighborhood. He was amazed: that I went out by myself at that hour, that I went out in just my nightgown, that my old car had such appeal, that my face upon return home showed what a fierce bitch I can be and holy goddess help anyone who threatened me or mine.
My mum once went outside in her flowery pink flannel nightgown, brandishing a pair of antique wooden skittles, to accost some potential car thieves. They fled.
I have no cool DEADLIFT or $$$ stories (mostly because I’m a loser who gives the $$$ back, so I never remember what amount it is – usually just a fiver, anyway), but I do have a weird theft story: the market radio antenna off my car and nothing else.
Related, but I have a wicked wedge gap in the passenger side door frame from some person who tried to unlock my car, presumably just to steal the entire thing without breaking the glass! It is as if all those dents were perhaps made by a blunt yet thin, rod-like object that an individual could, I don’t know, screw off the back end of the car itself…
My copy of “A People’s History of Science,” which I guess I abandoned to be stolen, because I realized ten minutes after I left my math class that I’d left it under my chair. And it was gone when I ducked my head into the classroom five minutes after that. I’M SORRY BOOK.
Also I KNOW that Stacy stole the fancy key I had in my desk in 4th grade, because she always sat in my desk when we had to shift classrooms for math class tracking. It was just a cheap little thing from my mom’s jewelry box, but I think it probably belonged to my grandma, and I was way into “The Indian in the Cupboard” at that point. Gah, Stacy!
ETA- Not theft, but destruction. On three separate occasions between 3rd grade and graduating high school someone sought out my artwork and either scribbled black marker all over it or just plain tore it up. I guess I had a secret nemesis? Wee Kat was a very shy, sensitive sort (Grown Kat is the same!) and still haven’t got a clue who I pissed off.
It was probably Stacy.
Oh no, Mallory!
Someone pickpocketed my walled when I was in college. (What up, Borders barista, I’m still pretty sure you were in on it.) Then they used my credit card to buy several hundred dollars worth of things from McDonalds and CVS. I still can’t imagine how you can possibly spend over a hundred dollars at once at McDonalds. Did they treat everyone on their block to Big Macs? The mind boggles.
i kind of love the idea of a teenage dirtbag making it rain in a McDonalds for all assorted area dirtbags. You want fries man? GET FRIES! I’ll build a whole TOWER of fries and then I bet I can eat them all in a minute, what you dont think I can? I TOTALLY CAN BRO. Let’s get McFlurries! EXTRA OREOS. I bet you cant eat 6 bigmacs dude OMG HE DID! ORDER 3 MORE
etc. etc.
The less interesting possibility is that they bought a ton of gift cards/gift certificates.
This happened to my grandpa – someone stole his wallet out of his gym locker and proceeded to just buy $100 gift certificates from every store in the strip mall where the gym was.
But you would think that once I contested the charges, they would automatically cancel the gift cards? It seems like it should work that way.
Teen dirtbags making it rain at McDonalds is a lot more endearing, that’s for sure. Borders barista, I hope you enjoyed your ill-gotten McFlurry merriment.
I’m sorry that happened to you! Please enjoy the We Got A Dollar song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1dqdOI2Xbc#t=17
Weirdest thing stolen:
One day I came out and found missing the piece of plastic trim that covers the space on the front of my car where the left fog lamp would be if I had bought the model with fog lamps.
Car-broken-into story:
One time I drove my friend to Best Buy to get a new laptop, and when we then went to Target to get a case for it, someone broke the back window of my car in order to open the trunk and steal the new laptop from it. So they followed us from one store to another in order to pull this off. And somehow all the cameras in the Target parking lot were pointed a different way, and nobody in the store even cared.
I felt worse than I would have if it had been my own laptop, because car insurance apparently doesn’t cover other people’s stuff getting stolen from your car, and she didn’t have renters’ insurance which would have, I am told, covered her stuff getting stolen outside her apartment as well as inside it.
That was the same Target where once a couple teenaged punks followed my partner around the store, being a combination of menacing and mocking. It is right next to a replica of the leaning tower of Pisa that is actually a YMCA so you would think it would be a classy Target, but nope. Target of doom.
We don’t go to that Target anymore.
in Niles?
Yep! Niles!
People really do the “case best buy customers” thing. My cousin bought a brand new PS3 then had to stop into a Walgreens to get prescriptions. The locks on his passenger side doors had always been wonky and apparently they didn’t lock, so somebody boosted the console not 10 minutes after purchase. Sucked for the guy.
Leaning Tower of Niles!
Chicago Toastie meetup at Rogers Park Social, Saturday, November 1, 7:00 – 10:00 pm!
Thanks for the invitation! I probably won’t be able to make it but thank you.
2. The weirdest thing anyone’s ever stolen from you
Twenty pairs of black underwear and my favorite pair of jeans, stolen out of the laundry room in my first apartment building, which had a key-entry front door so I’m reasonably confident they were was stolen by someone living there. They left the rest of the load, which means someone* stopped the dryer, picked through an overfilled load to find every pair of tiny black underpants amidst black sweaters and turtlenecks and skirts, and grabbed the jeans too because hey why not?
My underthings had been disappearing piecemeal for months, and I let my roommate, boyfriend, and mutual crush (three different people, though, um, well, at the time, we thought we had coined the relationship status “It’s complicated”) convince me that this was just normal laundry attrition. It was almost a relief to have undeniable proof that it was really theft. Creepy, creepy theft.
*I’ve always thought it was the guy who rode up and down in the elevator throughout the day, the guy who inspired me to start taking the stairs instead.
Dearest Toastrons,
Can someone explain to me some things about Tinder?
The big thing is, everyone always makes jokes about how it’s for hooking up, but then when people actually talk about using it they often seem to imply that they went on casual, low-pressure dates. Which is it? Does it depend on the time of day or day of the week or something? Are there people looking for both those things, and you sort out which people are looking for the thing you are looking for in the chat thing? Have I repeated the word “thing” too many times in the last question?
The other thing is, I read an Tinder-date-based article on xoJane once where the writer mentioned that she created a second Facebook account just for Tinder, because that’s just common sense and absolutely everyone does that. That sounds like a lot of work and also kind of paranoid and like it would prevent Tinder from using mutual friends data, which is apparently a thing it does. Please tell me she was wrong?
Basically, I feel like I would like to try going on a casual date occasionally, but the only way I know to find such dates is OKCupid, which is more work than I feel like doing right now, so I’m hoping someone will tell me that Tinder will suit my purposes.
I can tell you that on Monday I decided I needed to go on some dates and got on Tinder for a couple hours, and I had mildly successful, low-pressure dates with two different dudes on the following two evenings. I use my real facebook account and I’ve never had any trouble with creeps beyond what you get on any other dating site. It’s easy to block people if needed. Worth a try!
Plus scrolling through Tinder and judging people based on almost no information is a fun bar game.
Hooray! That is pretty much exactly what I was hoping to hear.
It seems like people are using it for both hooking up and dating. You can usually tell what someone’s looking for if they message you something like “Hey sexxyyyy DTF??” or something like “Hi, I’m Joe. I see we both like the Mountain Goats. What’s your favorite song? [several dozen messages later] Would you be free to get drinks on Tuesday?” There’s also a brief profile section so you can say what you’re looking for there. I have friends who are in relationships that started on Tinder & also know people who use it to hook up.
I use my own Facebook, but I don’t really care if my friends know that I’m on Tinder. I don’t know anyone who made a fake Facebook for it, that seems like a lot of work! Tinder shows you which mutual Facebook friends you have with other people on Tinder, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the mutual friends are on Tinder.
I’ve been on a handful of Tinder dates, they’ve ranged from “mostly awkward” to “pretty fun” but nothing awful or amazing. It’s been pretty much the same as my OKCupid experience, which is pretty meh.
Excellent. Thank you!
I’m not really expecting anything more than what I got last time I tried OKCupid, which was also pretty meh. Mostly I’m just hoping to do less work for the same meh result.
Oh, also, to clarify about the fake Facebook profile: I think she implied that it was to avoid potential stalkers being able to find more info about her. Which still doesn’t seem like a great reason to me, not because there aren’t potential stalkers on the internet, but because there are limits to how much work I’m willing to do specifically to avoid them.
And UGH, I’m sorry, Mallory, that stinks. They can never take your personal best from you!
Nothing too crazy has been stolen from me (besides my Blue Eyes White Dragon card in 5th grade), but Monday I went grocery shopping while it was raining and when I took my cart to the corral there was an umbrella I was v tempted to steal. I didn’t, tho, bc it was way too nice-looking and I can’t have that kind of umbrella responsibility.
The weirdest time I didn’t notice something being stolen from my property:
When I was in college I was in love with this really terrible boy and in the deepest part of that black pit of despair (until the next deepest part) he left his bike locked outside my off-campus house. It was a warm May night and I probably cried myself to sleep with the window open and I woke up in the middle of the night to these grunting sounds outside. I assumed it was a older dude I had seen before jacking off outside, which was normal for that college town and which I had seen before and which I did not need repeat visual confirmation of (and besides I DIDN’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING) and I went back to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning I found out that the sounds had actually been those of someone breaking the lock of and stealing this boy’s bike. HE DESERVED IT. No one has ever stolen my bike, even though I left it locked outside in New York for two years with no break once.
Wow, 2 years outside in NYC! That’s impressive! I had my bike stolen in February 🙁
“I assumed it was a older dude I had seen before jacking off outside, which was normal for that college town”
……………. D:
I know right 🙁
I once found FIVE. DOLLARS. in a crosswalk in college. I tucked it into page 42 of one of my Terry Pratchett books and I think it’s still there, five years later. Because it’s LUCKY
LOL HOW COULD I FORGET
Several thousand dollars worth of charges for World of Warcraft online. Credit card company refunded the money, but seriously? This is the bank that, after I had notified them that I would be in Mexico for such and such dates, “so please don’t cancel my card when charges start coming from the Yucatan,” went ahead and canceled my card while I was in Mexico because of the suspicious charges. Yet over $3k in a ten minute span to an online game I’d never played before didn’t ring any security bells. Super helpful, HSBC.
This reminded me that my friend’s boyfriend had his WoW account hacked and everything stolen from it. He was SO SAD.
When I played, I was actually much more nervous about getting my account hacked in WoW than I was about, say, my credit card being stolen. Because there are rules and records to protect you and get your money back in case of fradulent activity (despite being careful I have had my credit card information stolen at least twice in the past 10 years, and it’s been very easy to fix & get my money back every time). But the stuff you earn in WoW can represent hours upon hours of playtime, and they don’t always keep good records of what’s in your inventory- so you can lose literally years worth of work and memories if you get hacked. My account’s dormant now, but I still have stuff from 2005 in there that I would hate to have lost.
I once went to tell my bank that I was going abroad, so to please refrain from cancelling my card if they saw overseas transactions on my record, only to be told, “Oh, we don’t put notes on people’s records about that any more. But here’s the number to call if we do cancel your card”. THANKS.
Right?! Oh, silly me, thinking you were supposed to be providing me a service! I mean, isn’t it in fact EASIER nowadays to have a note like that in a file, what-with all the digital whosie-whats-its these days?
They once cancelled my sister’s card four days before Christmas because of ‘unusual patterns’ like Christmas shopping and a turkey.
when i was working a club called Platinum in Florida, i was giving a bench lapdance (which is to say, not private/other girls+clients exist beside you) and when the 5 minutes was up i went retrieve my shirt from where i had so sexily/lazily tossed it beside us and IT WAS GONE. someone literally stole my SHIRT. i still miss it. it was a good shirt.
Years ago, I lived in a shitty bachelor apartment near the Fabulous Forum strip club in London, Ontario. The apartment was the back shed/garage of an old house. So from outside, it still looked like a garage or shed. Some guys on their way to the strip club broke my kitchen window and took all the things off the back of my stove, like cooking wine, olive oil etc. It’s funny now, but at the time it was scary. I have no idea what they did with what they stole.
At the same apartment, my then-boyfriend (now husband) had his neon green and purple motorcycle jacket stolen from his car. But his car was a rolling hoard, so he didn’t realize for several days that this large item was missing. He mourns the jacket. I do not.
I believe one of my best squat sessions was on the last morning practice for my senior year of college water polo. We drank mimosas in the parking lot and ate bagels with cream cheese and then ate leftover cream cheese when the bagels gave out.
OK, the weirdest thing I am (pretty sure) was stolen from me: I used to have this really terrible metallic purple vibrator, which was too crappy to actually use, so I made a pope hat out of paper, but it on the vibrator, and called it “Pope Cocksure.” And like, I kept it on a shelf and stuff. It went missing after we had people over one time, and I am pretty sure someone took it, because I didn’t find it even when we moved out. It just…disappeared.
Once, just around Christmas, I found a wallet with $60 inside. I was super broke at the time and contemplated keeping the money. But Christmas spirit prevailed. The address on the license was in a shady part of my neighbourhood, but I was brave and returned the wallet. The owner’s mom answered the door. She didn’t speak much English, but she was thrilled I’d returned it. As I was walking away from the house, I heard someone yelling, “Mees, mees.” I turned to see the mom, sprinting down an icy street, wearing heels and carrying the largest damn poinsettia I’d ever seen. She pressed it into my arms and said, “Merry Christmas” and ran away again. I really tried to keep that plant alive.
I am majorly happy crying at this story. I hope that poinsettia stayed alive for a long time.
It was so sweet! I have a black thumb of death, so the poor plant struggled for a few weeks and died. But I kept it’s shriveled carcass for quite awhile.
One time I spent [several] happy hour[s] at a few Dupont Circle bars in DC, so I decided to stop and get some donuts at Krispy Kreme to appease my now-ex who was going to pick my drunk ass up at the New Carrollton metro station at 1am. I was standing on the orange/blue line platform at Dupont Circle and some YOUTH came SPRINTING down the platform, grabbed the box of donuts I was holding, and kept running.
I was in such shock that someone STOLE MY DONUTS that I couldn’t even do anything about it.
Nooo! Not the Krispy Kremes!
(incidentally, I work right next to the aforementioned Krispy Kreme, and I might need to stop by after work now…)
GBD. Golden Brown Delicious. Just do a donut tour!
oh my god! now THAT is a teenage dirtbag.
youths. 😐
Once I was walking to get the mail at work and leaving my best friend a voicemail, when a $20 bill blew across my path. I interrupted whatever dull story I was telling to recorder with “AND THEN I FOUND $20.” Everything was instantly more interesting.
My friend then left her own voicemail message back (this was 2005 or so) and told me that since I had found $20, I had to pay for dinner last night, and so I bought us both Asian chicken wraps from Applebee’s, because we were 19 and lived in the suburbs and that was as exciting as our lives got.
The end.
With the exception of kidnapping, I cannot imagine losing anything more valuable when I was a victim of identity theft. This was before it was a thing, so I had to explain and explain to police and everyone else. I was constantly having to prove my own identity. There were no laws or processes back then (1995), either. My name is gender-neutral and there was an entire, organized theft ring using my identity, dozen of men and women. For years. Thank goodness I was recently married. I did everything financial in the husband’s name for several years. It was a nightmare.
one time i ate a grape
When I was 10 someone stole my Tamagotchi off of my desk at G&T Summer camp. While I had my back turned. I still don’t get how this happened. It was the middle of class.
Even though I’d just read you were 10 when this happened and thus nowhere near legal drinking age, I still wondered what on earth a Gin & Tonic Summer camp was, and if they operate year-round. Because they should.
Gin & Tonic Summer camp. Yes, please.
I recently went to visit a friend who lives in a small town that also happens to have a large lakeside resort with a fantastic bar, and we didn’t do nearly enough ‘sitting on the resort veranda drinking gin & tonics and calling people Muffy and/or Chip in plummy accents’ for my taste.
We did watch loads of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, though, so I suppose it balanced out.
This is terrible and my heart goes out to you, but I’m going to focus on the least important part of your story and say that the YMCA is AMAZING and everyone should join. The end.
My sister and her husband started dating in high school, i.e., when they were young and broke. On his way to their first ever date, my brother-in-law was debating “Do I pay for her lunch? I should pay, right? But I don’t have enough cash. But do I offer anyway?” Then he looked down and found a five dollar bill, so he was able to pay for her lunch after all. And if he hadn’t found it THEY MIGHT NOT BE MARRIED TODAY.
I have had many things stolen… among them:
1. A case of water bottles out of my car in high school (probably related to the fact that I refused to lock my doors in protest because my dad wouldn’t pay to fix the driver’s side lock and it was too much effort to walk around. Dirtbag!)
2. A bunch of food out of my fridge/freezer. Bags full.
3. My snowboard from the rack outside the bar at a resort in Vermont. (This was the worst, and not only because I thought I was drunk and just couldn’t find it and searched every rack for ages before I realized it was stolen)
(I’m a little worried that this was the topic that inspired me to finally make an account and comment)
I’m always so worried my skis will get stolen! I didn’t really know that actually happened though. Maybe they don’t steal skis, because thieves probably aren’t that square?
Pandora was actually helpful for once in its existence and introduced me to a song called “Destroy Everything You Touch” by a band named Ladytron, so I am going to listen to that on a loop now.
Also, I once found a 20 dollar bill while running during that one 4 month period where I was working my way through Couch to 5k but it has not inspired me to start up again.
When I was in college, someone broke into my car and stole my CDs, most of which were burned anyway, and attempted to get my after market radio, but failed. They only managed to dislodge the plastic around it.
I went to school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and lived for two years on Mifflin Street, where the infamous block party is held. On my way to dinner with my then-boyfriend I found a dollar bill on the sidewalk in front of a frat house and I excitedly picked it up. I heard laughing coming from the stoop of the house; the frat guys had rubbed the underside of the bill in dog shit. I walked to dinner with my hand covered in shit, crying, ashamed that I had so easily been had. The worst part: My boyfriend laughed at the prank.
This is great timing for me, because I need help! I am going to a cocktail attire gala for a professional organization. I am in NYC. I need to/choose to cover tattoos on my upper arm. At work, I do this with a cardigan but obviously that is not nice enough for a gala. I am leaning toward wearing a dress with a cute/fun/nice jacket. Any other suggestions for covering half my arms without looking matronly?
A pretty scarf/shawl thing around your shoulders would be a nice option and fitting for the weather (though it might get annoying to deal with as the evening wears on).
If there has ever been an event that required use of a cape/capelet, I would say that THIS IS DEFINITELY IT.
Is it coming up soon? A dress with elbow-length sleeves may also work for such an occasion should the weather provide.
That would be ideal. Unfortunately, it can be hard to find dresses with sleeves!
Depending on your tolerance for a little risk, Rent the Runway might work for this. I got a beautiful, impractically expensive cocktail-ish dress from them to wear for an evening wedding, and not only did I end up with a $500 dress that cost me $45, their customer service was fantastic when one of my choices wasn’t available. You can narrow your search by size, body type, occasion, and even (TADA!) sleeve length.
I second Rent the Runway. I got a beauuuutiful dress to wear to a friend’s wedding. $50 for a $500 dress!
I have a couple of little bolero-type cardigans, one black and sparkly and one silver and sparkly, that I use when I need my shoulders covered in a sparkly/smart way.
Bag of pennies and a backpack to carry them.
Stolen, not deadlifted.
1) Eh heh heh
2) Once someone broke into my car, stole a bag of cleaning supplies, and left my Lilith Fair and Tori Amos CDs. It felt like kind of a burn.
3) I have been hurt too many times by those fake dollars people leave around, I have no idea what it’s like to find a real one.
Once I found a dollar bill with some poop folded in it. So I guess my innocence is the weirdest thing stolen from me.
That is a terrible thing to happen Mallory but you are a champ and can probably bench press the car thief!!!
I just found out today that someone used my credit card to buy $48.64 worth of Papa John’s. Weird? Creepy. Technically stealing?
I don’t remember finding a dollar anywhere special (that I can remember) but I dreamt last night that I found $300 and debated to myself for a second about keeping it and then was like, “nope this is definitely mine now” and I have a suspicion that that’s exactly what I would do if this happened to me awake in real life too.
What a week it’s been
I once found a $100 in twenties on the sidewalk. It was before eight on a Saturday morning in downtown Seattle. I looked around, and the block was deserted. Since in the preceding month I had had to borrow money from my parents to cover rent, when a client failed to pay up in a timely fashion, I said ‘thank you,’ and told the friend who was meeting me for breakfast (with the intent of treating me) that I could buy my own meal.
The next week, I received word that I had landed a full time job that paid actual money, and my shitty client paid up, but that hundred was so welcome.
Today’s wash:
1. My phone up and died last night, like, a week after the warranty ran out, so I had to buy another
2. BUT since phones depreciate like mad I was able to get the same phone I had before for $100 cheaper
3. I lost my photos which were important because they were 99% of my cat
4. BUT this happened today, and not tomorrow when the new iPhone 6 comes out and all wireless retailers become warzones.
The worst thing someone’s stolen from me was me and my parent’s financial information, and it was worse because it was entirely my fault. I grew up in a nice & very sheltered neighborhood where you could leave mail sticking out of the slot for the mail carrier to pick up, and when I moved to my new place in Baltimore (in a not…as nice neighborhood) I thought I could do the same thing. Someone stole it, of course, and got a check my parents had written for me, my credit card number, and (by far the worst) my parent’s account information. I got a new credit card pretty fast (and the charges on the old one dismissed) once I realized what had happened, but my parents had to really fight the bank to convince them that no, they were not responsible for hundreds of dollars’ worth of cell phone bills someone had run up on T-Mobile and used their checking account to pay for. My parents were nice about it but I felt pretty awful. And dumb.
Weirdest thing anyone ever stole from me: dirty gym clothes in high school.
OMG someone fished my Hard Rock Cafe boxers out of my gym locker in ninth grade! I had forgotten about that. They were so cool, and I was so mad!
OH MAN I forgot that in [junior high? high school? why can’t I remember this?] someone broke into my gym locker and stole out of my purse several jars of fancy new eyeshadow that I had JUST bought after many months of deliberation and using a big fat wad of birthday and babysitting money.
… and she never bought fancy makeup again, intones the narrator dolefully.
Well, that sucks, but congrats on the deadlift milestone!
The weirdest thing ever stolen from me was probably the athletic bag containing a sweaty martial arts uniform, and nothing much else of value.
Not quite stealing, but more like an unauthorized exchange? When I was working at Target, the day after Thanksgiving, my shift had wrapped up and I went into the break room to get my coat. And when I went to put something into the pocket, I realized that it was not, in fact, MY coat. Someone else working with me had the same coat, and had taken the wrong one when they’d left earlier. The joke was on them, however, because their coat was newer and in better shape than mine had been.
Also, finding money is fantastic.
Finding money is great and all but twice in my life I’ve found small amounts of marijuana that I of course turned in to the nearest constabulary.
I have walking pneumonia and will be unable to go to the gym for at least another week, probably. On the one hand, yay! More free time at home! On the other hand, noooooo, my musclessss. I’m not naturally athletic, but I am sturdily built and deadlifted a personal max of 215 recently. I can also do 1000 on the linear leg press!
I hate being sick and I have complicated feelings about my job. Everything sucks, the end.
Yesterday was my personal best too!! I deadlifted 225 lbs. Then I ate so many fried and steam dumplings and drank a gin gimlet and felt deliriously happy.
This is the best way to celebrate a two wheel deadlift! Btw, I am so jealous; 225 lbs consistently eludes me.
Thank you! I am up 90 pounds since February and feel PROUD. I totally couldn’t get the 225 off the ground on my first attempt yesterday–then I chalked up, walked back to the bar and did 5 reps! Psychologically, I can’t grasp going up any higher than this though.
Holy crap, this is a 90 lb increase since Feb?!? Did you start lifting recently (as in, within this past year)? If so I think you probably have more gains ahead of you!
When I was in high school, teenage dirtbags broke into my house and stole my mother’s wallet and gum from her purse, as well as my brother’s backpack, complete with homework and Jock Jams CD. They then stole our neighbor’s midlife crisis Ferrari and got caught speeding. I am firmly convinced they were chewing Trident and grooving to Whoomp! There It Is when the long arm of the law caught up with them.
I also had a co-worker whose car was stolen, which he admitted was inconvenient but that what he *really* missed was his Avril Lavigne cd collection. I believe he lost her entire oeuvre (to date).
My personal weirdest theft was the left rear hubcab of my 1992 Honda Civic. Just the one.
I found a $5 bill in the gutter muck last winter. I was pretty stoked about spotting it.
A pair of my knickers were nicked from the drying line at a convent. I only had two pairs for hiking and two pairs for not hiking to get me through a 45 day trip which included 36 days of hiking.
The only time anything’s been stolen from me it was when I was maybe 13, 14 years old. When my family was leaving my aunt’s house after a weekend stay, I insisting on stopping at my favourite comic book store in the city before we drove home. My mom told me “make sure you hide your valuables” and I was like “whatever, mom” and did a very half-hearted job of concealing my iPod and Nintendo DS. We went to the comic book store, I bought the book I’d been specifically looking for, and we came back maybe 10 minutes later, tops, to a smashed passenger side window and my iPod and Nintendo DS gone. There was a group of drunk homeless men across the street from where we were parked who almost definitely either witnessed or perpetrated the theft. The cop who took our report spoke to them, but they insisted they saw nothing and that we probably “made it up” as we swept the glass shards off the sidewalk with a borrowed broom.
And oh god, the guilt. My parents had to pay to replace the glass because I didn’t listen to my mom. They were very kind about it and not angry, especially since it was only my stuff that was taken anyways, but still, SO much guilt. My parents never had to punish me for anything as a teen because I always felt so guilty that I essentially punished myself. I’m still super paranoid about theft. I check my pockets constantly for my phone even though I live somewhere where pick-pocketing is very rare.
I used to go to school in a high school located on a college campus, and you one had to lock down every damn thing or Dirtbag College Students would steal it, draw dicks on it, or use it to draw dicks with (as when our freshmen left chalk fragments by their lovely sidewalk drawings of endangered animals). One time my friend left a string of holiday lights up in the patio, and they stole only the bulbs.
Congrats on the deadlift. I just started rowing (on a machine, natch) again this week. Really psyched to go do it tonight, because Mr. Citizen is on a business trip right now and I need to fill time so I don’t talk out loud to the cats so often.
My only theft story is that once someone stole a package for me from the lobby of my apartment building. It was a backpack I had ordered from REI. I was particularly mad because my roommate had seen the package, opted not to carry it up to our fourth floor apartment because “it seemed heavy” (it was not), and then it was stolen. We had two neighbors that we disliked and we suspected it was one of them, but most likely someone had just followed someone else into the building and snatched it.
Can I tell the story of my bad neighbors though? One day I came home in the middle of the day (this was college) and our building reeked of gas. I went door to door asking if people knew what was going on and no one had a clue. The bad neighbors said that they didn’t smell anything at all. Then I called the leasing company and they allegedly sent someone who also smelled nothing. Then I called the gas company and they sent someone over who said, “Yep, definitely smells like gas. We’ll look for a leak.” The gas company person then found out that the apartment who told me to my face that they smelled nothing had left their stove top gas on all night but had figured it out and turned it off in the morning. Why they decided to lie about this to me I’ll never know.
My other group of bad neighbors lived below us. They were sophomores in college when I was a senior and were rowdy after living under dorm rules. They would start playing loud music at 1 am on weeknights when they weren’t having parties. They also did something we called ‘fight club’, where late at night it would sound like someone was throwing furniture or bodies around. My roommate’s bedroom was directly above their living room where this stuff happened, and she asked them over and over to be quiet so she could sleep. She talked to them in person, left notes, called the leasing company, the whole thing. Eventually they stopped answering the door when she knocked. One night before she had a midterm, she got fed up with trying to talk to them so she called the police. She had already gone down twice that night and knocked on the door, so when the campus police knocked they shouted through the door, “F*ck off, we know it’s the b*tch upstairs!” They didn’t answer the door until the police said they would let themselves in. We think there was underage drinking happening so that party wrapped up real quickly but those neighbors were awful for the rest of the time we lived there.
Tell me your bad neighbor stories!
We used to live next door to some students – several in a row, because we’re a university town.
Anyway the second lot of these students had a party every wednesday that went on til 4 am and thursdays was my early start day. The party would always involve one of the women shrieking and doing that monkey-ish drunk laugh, and one of the men playing wonderwall, very badly, for an hour.
Oh my god how can anyone play wonderwall for an hour
What is it about student neighbors? We have a rotating band of them in the apartment above us. The group that moved in last year was great; mostly quiet, usually let us know if they were having a party/the water heater had turned off/etc. They had a dog with separation anxiety who howled if left alone, but even he was super cool the rest of the time.
But now. They’ve swapped out a few roommates, and these new folks never give us party heads-up (or invitations! come on, kids, it’s nice to be asked) and one of them loves to get ragingly drunk and go on a tour of the apartment yelling ‘FUCK YOOOOOOOOU’ to every room at 3 AM. I miss the howling dog; at least he was dependable.
The 2 best bad neighbor stories are as follows:
1) the old woman who lived in the apartment next to me (we shared walls) who had a trillion cats and an old man boyfriend and they would constantly fight, and every time he opened the apartment door, a cat would get out and there would be screaming and chasing. Terrible smells from that place.
2) Upstairs neighbors who first, had an illegal washing machine hooked up to their sink that overflowed so there was water dripping down from the ceiling in the hall and then over the winter, didn’t use their heat, instead using 1 space heater in the bedroom, so the pipes froze, but it was my apartment that got the brunt of it (something about the way the pipes run) so I got to call the landlord at 3 am to tell him there was steam rising from the floor and I can’t for the life of me figure out what is going on.
My upstairs neighbors my last year of university hosted a “dubstep club” in their apartment on Thursday nights. It took weeks of us getting pissed at the music before I was on that floor for some reason and noticed the sign on their door advertising the club, and was able to lodge an official complaint.
This beats my fight club by a mile.
I would have been annoyed but understanding if they had their club meetings on weekends. But Thursday nights? My roommates and I all had 9am classes on Fridays. Of course, this was a university residence building that fucked up and put the “quiet” floor on the third floor instead of the top floor.
The last apartment I lived in was a duplex, and the family next door had a teenage dirtbag kid who was constantly breaking/making up with his girlfriend in the street outside. Oh, the times I longed to shout relationship advice out of my window at 2am.
One time someone broke my window, rifled through all my things, (they even dumped out my underwear drawer) and stole…a bottle of beer. Not even one that was in the fridge, but a bottle of beer from the countertop. They left the other five in the six pack.
Another time, I accidentally left my car doors unlocked overnight (I later learned the electronic locks had stopped working), and somebody stole my empty briefcase and a box of things I was taking to the salvation army the next day. They left box next to it, which contained designer clothes and shoes I was planning on selling.
Once as about six I found a 20$ on the ground after school. I showed everyone on the way home and asked if they’d lost it. Even if one of them had, I don’t think anyone was heartless enough to claim it. I eventually cracked it and kept the change in its own little jar. I don’t think I managed to spend that money until I was about ten, and even then I kept a single quarter. I eventually forgot about it.
I later found a bunch of twenties in an envelope with someone’s name written on it. I guess this also doubles as the handyman’s story of the time a ten(?)-year-old stole their paycheque and then asked them if they’d lost 200$.
For a while, the street that I lived was terrorized by some punk teenager who was busting into cars and robbing them. Night after night he got away, until finally he broke into my car to steal what I had left in there — not realizing that literally the only thing i keep in my car is actual garbage — and came away with nothing except the broken control panel to a CD changer my brother had installed while I was at college. The CD changer did not work. To my knowledge, the CD changer had never worked.
Nevertheless, it was on this final caper that he was caught. Hundreds of dollars, expensive leather jackets, cell phones, cash, he’d gotten away with ALL of it, and was finally nicked while rooting through my garbage dump of a Volkswagon to get his hands on a broken piece of broken machinery.
They called me in to court to testify, apparently he pled guilty, and the value of what he stole was going to determine how many community service hours he’d have to work, and I was forced to estimate exactly how much that broken fucking CD changer remote was worth.
Oh no, fellow Fallen London Toasties – my Scandal rose too high thank to too much flirting with devils and now I’m in disgraced exile in the Tomb-Colonies!
i love this game soooo much <3
I recently fought the vake in pitch darkness and woke up in the care of violent nuns.
IT’S SUCH A GOOD GAME.
Congratulations on your deadlift PR! Deadlifts are so satisfying.
Powerlifting/Olympic Weightlifting PRs & Stories
185 lb low bar back squat for one triple; how I did it: squatted regularly twice a week, taking care as I approached my previous one rep max of 190lbs to do five triples at a weight, and then three sets of five reps just so I can get accustomed to the weight.
[everything else is a one rep max, one of my favorite things to do and the big reason why I’ve bothered with meets]
220 lb deadlift; how I did it: can’t remember other than training it consistently and weighing 10 lbs more than I do now. Gaining weight (aka bulking) may not be an ideal way of making gains but it definitely works.
95 lb bench press; how I did it: this has been my PR for awhile ( -_-; fuck you 100 lbs) but the most recent go around I learned to keep my shoulders back and my back tight, which is always good
101 lb clean and jerk; how I did it: consistent training, developing the coordination to squat clean and keeping my back tight and my head back during the jerk
103 lb clean (couldn’t jerk it); how I did it: see above
70 lb snatch; how I did it: I barely remember at this point, my snatches are terrible but they could be better now since my flexibility has improved the past year.
What I’ve consumed post-PRs
(I can’t remember specific meals after specific PRs)
Beer, ice cream, burgers with fried eggs, Indian food, Korean BBQ. I can’t absolutely remember if I’ve done this, but I should eventually also include a Peruvian Chicken meal after my next PR. Or some Matthew’s Pizza.
Bonus: Why I Haven’t Had More PRs
-work schedule led to inconsistent training
-traveling for at least three days for funsies
-losing part of my finger when trying to put 150lbs on a 24 inch box (most recent reason). My only lingering bitterness with this is that I had improved my hip mobility so much and finally got knee sleeves, so the last time I did sets of 5 at 180 they were FUCKING AMAZING. I had also begun fixing the fact that I was squatting too deeply, and now I can barely grip a barbell properly.
LIfting: a hay bale in each hand – about 25kg I think? 50-odd lb.
Weird shit getting nicked: out of my own car, a bag of sweets. They broke in, left all the tapes (it was pre-CD player in car), and ate an entire bag of haribo. Our of my dad’s car: my stuffed reindeer, when I was about 7. I heas HEARTBROKEN.
Ooh, ooh, I have a couple of weird theft stories!
Ok, a couple of years ago someone tried to steal my ex-boyfriend’s shitty work truck. They busted the drivers’ side door handle, and disassembled the ignition (you can start it with a screwdriver now) but they left it in the driveway. We were confused, until we realized they probably didn’t understand that it only starts if it’s in reverse – if it’s in park or neutral it won’t start for some reason. It’s also a work truck, so it beeps when it’s in reverse, so maybe if they did put it in reverse they were scared off by the beeping? Either way, phew I guess.
Other theft story: my ex told me this one about my other ex (they were really good friends, because lesbians). Ex #1 was at Ex #2’s house while they were getting ready to go meet some other friends. Ex #2 went to take a shower while Ex #1 waited for her. When Ex #2 got out of the shower, Ex #1 said, “wow, you sure have a lot of money in your bedside table drawer! It’s a good thing I’m not a thief, because I could totally have stolen it if I wanted to, ha ha ha.”
Unsurprisingly, she was never invited to Ex #2’s house ever again.
My best friend’s ex/fuckbuddy of the time/douche of the month stole two Queens of the Stone Age tickets from me. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, SHITSTAIN, AND I KNOW ABOUT YOUR BIRTHMARK.
Back when I lived in NC, someone broke into my little Honda and stole my radio, but LEFT THE THREE ROLLS OF QUARTERS that were in the driver-side cupholder. They left behind actual money. Money which is worth even more than its face value, because of laundry machines and parking meters. Meth-heads, man. TAKE A SECOND AND THINK IT THROUGH next time, car-radio thieves.
This is not a story about any of those things.
On Monday, I was going next door to have dinner with the neighbors (they’d invited me), and there was shouting. Mrs. Neighbor had gotten drunk, freaked out about something totally pointless, and punched Mr. Neighbor, not for the first time. So he called the police, I took the kids (7 and 5, actually his 5th birthday that day) and the dogs over to my house, and he chatted with the police for what felt like forever before they very calmly took Mrs. Neighbor downtown for about an hour to talk to her. She apparently had a bad childhood, and sometimes gets violent. I think it’s something that could be resolved with therapy, but obviously she doesn’t get to punch her husband for any reason.
Ok, so now I feel super weird around Mrs. Neighbor, especially because just after Mr. Neighbor finished calling the police, she stormed out of the house, demanded that I listen to her side of the story, and then told me that if I didn’t want to hear it, I could just go home and not come back. I’m super-close with this family, I love the kids, and I’ve been invited to the 5-year old’s birthday party on Sunday. Should I, at some point, go next door and ask her if we’re ok? Text her husband and ask him if she’s mad at me? Wait quietly until one of them comes over to my house to talk to me?
Oh, and once, while I was looking for a nickel to go get a can of pop from the vending machine, I found $20 instead.
Wow. Hm. That’s a tough one because it depends so much on just how mean she was to you, how close/friendly you were to start with, and of course your own feelings matter the most (I have been known to just walk away from stuff like this, hands raised, “I’m out, goodnight” because no more drama) but it sounds like you don’t want to say sayonara, so I would go with option #2: touch base with the husband and see what he advises. He knows her better, obvs, so he’ll be able to tell you if the right thing to do, with an eye to moving forward, is just to ignore the whole thing and enjoy the birthday party, or to reach out to her ahead of time, whatever.
Shitty and weird feeling, though, right? Good luck to you. I hope you come away feeling better about it, one way or another. 🙂
Good news! Mr N. was walking one of the dogs, so I went outside and asked him if Mrs. N. was mad at me. She’s not, and things are back to (almost) normal. She’s got to go to court tomorrow, since she left a visible bruise, and it’s state law that you have to be arrested and taken to court if there’s a visible bruise. I’ll probably stop in tomorrow after work and see how she’s doing; hopefully this will have been a wakeup call for her that she needs to get some help.
Yay! That’s a load off. And good for you, I think it’s really kind of you to drop in tomorrow to see you neighbour. I hope everything works out for you and her, and the family. You are a caring neighbour and fine human. 🙂
To be fair, I probably wouldn’t be nearly as invested if it weren’t for the kids and the dogs.
If you’re interested in continuing a relationship with the Neighbors, 1) you are a saint and I admire you, and 2) assume anything Mrs. said was not in earnest and is now forgotten. She was drunk. The best case scenario is that she is now ashamed of herself and may feel she should avoid *you*. Go to her and try for a more or less normal greeting. Show her and him you’re still their friend. Then you can sit back and wait. Those kids, though, they need people like you.
The kids are the best. And both of them were trying to make sure the other one was taken care of. The 7-year old also went back to get some oranges, because they hadn’t had dinner yet. She asked me if I wanted to keep the peels to put on my compost pile, and then made sure her little brother had all of his blankets and the toy he wanted. They’re really sweet kids.
I’ll probably stop by tomorrow evening to see how she’s doing, ask if she wants to talk, maybe bring some cookies or something (not, I think, a bottle of wine).
Toasties! I am emerging from my eternal lurk to speak on both finding money and my consistent Pollyanna status:
I once found three $20 bills in the parking lot of a Target, and immediately went to the Customer Service desk to turn it in like the Good Girl I am (and also, hey, if no one claims it it’s mine, right? I’m a poor Museum Worker, sixty bucks is a lot of money) and the woman behind the desk looks at me all bored and says, “Ok, I’ll keep it back here” and makes a big show of folding up the bills carefully, watching me side-eyed the whole time to see if I’m still there. So I say, “Do you…want my contact info or anything?” and she looks me DEAD IN THE FACE with her miserable eyes and says, “Nope. You’re all set.” We had a bit of a stare-off where we BOTH KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON, DAMMIT, but she won and I walked away.
So of course I spent the next 15 minutes or so speed-walking angrily around the store, mad at myself for not just keeping the damned money, and texting my mother, who, despite instilling in me the Strict Moral Code I live by, wrote: “That Target woman is going to keep it you know.”
THANKS MOM.
If it’s any consolation, $60 is a lot of money when you work at Target, as well.
My bike was stolen when I was in high school. There wasn’t enough space in the bike rack cage for all the bikes so I locked it to the fence every day, along with about thirty other people. I got sick and the nurse sent me home early so I went to get my bike and it was gone. I actually wasn’t sure it had been stolen at first because I felt so awful I thought there was a chance I just didn’t recognize it. So I walked home and my dad went back to check that evening when the other bikes were gone.
Maybe five or six years after that my stereo was stolen out of my car. I didn’t care about the stereo since my dad collects car stereos like some people collect, I don’t know-stamps or something, so he just put a new one in. The library didn’t make me pay to replace the cd that was in it since I had a police report but I ended up having to replace the car door. After smashing the window the thief leaned into the car rather than opening the door and it messed up the frame so the door wouldn’t open at all. We fitted a piece of plexiglass into the window frame since that is classier than a clear trash bag and started checking junkyards for a door.
Fortunately the car was an early 90s Mustang, the type that wealthy people who build their own cars from kits instead of just building a model car use as the donor for Cobra replicas. And my dad was at the time a driver for a company that delivered the kits. He bought a bright yellow door from someone on the other side of the country and strapped it to the back of his semi tractor since there wasn’t enough room in the trailer. We sprayed it primer gray before putting it on the car so it looked slightly less tack with the dark red paint. Unfortunately it took several months from break in to installing the new door and I had to climb in and out through the passenger door which messed up my right knee. I still have problems with it.
Oh, hey, everyone else stayed on topic. Oops.
I don’t think I’ve had anything weird stolen? I’ll go with the weirdest thing that was unexpectedly given to me, which is kind of like a theft in reverse: In my first year at university I had a roommate who I mostly ignored and avoided. At the end of the year, she pressed upon me a gold bracelet, on the grounds that it was too big for her and would suit me better. She was fairly thin and I was not, so I think she was sincere about the reasons, but it seemed to me like a close-friends sort of gift, and we weren’t really close friends.
I’m pretty sure someone stole the grille from my 20-year-old volvo 240 one time, although it’s possible the thing could have just fallen off. But I feel like I would have noticed/heard that? At any rate, eventually a kind mechanic found a salvaged grille to attach to my car using zip ties, and even though I had to pay him $1000 or something for other repairs, the new grille just kind of MADE MY DAY.
I snatched 50kg last week! Finally, a place to say that!
Oh man. I was recently in West Oakland (where my dude lives) and someone stole his running shoes out of his car! Just the running shoes. Not the stereo, not anything else. They rifled through everything and it looked like a very local tornado had ripped through there, but nothing else was missing. Luckily, they didn’t break any windows – the car was either already open or they slim-jimmed the locks.
The best time I found money was on my 22nd birthday – I had just moved to NYC the previous summer, had an amazing day with a bunch of friends, walked out of a bar a little tipsy and happy, and right there on the ground was a $20! Glorious.
Oh no! Sorry to hear that Mallory!
My car window was actually smashed last week too! They took my backpack, but there wasn’t anything valuable in it. Hope they were happy with my ancient protein shake and favorite lipstick.
Once, someone ripped the starter out of our then-20 year old crap Honda. Nothing else. Just the starter. Another time, someone broke into our car and stole … nothing. It was also a crap car, the radio was broken, and I’d just cleaned out all the change, so there was nothing to steal. I sometimes wonder if the first person stole the starter out of pique that the car had nothing else of value in it. The second person left a screwdriver, perhaps as a subtle message.
When I was a child, I was in an arcade at the mall; I had no money, but my mother was shopping and she had allowed me to stay there with all the pretty games instead of waiting around while she tried on clothes.
Well, I found a $20 bill on the ground. I cannot express how much money this was to my wee self. I was rich. Bloody rich.
I frittered it all away on arcade games that day, and was devastated when I realized it was all gone. 🙁
Weird things I’ve had stolen:
1. The ‘VW’ logo from the front of my car?? This is apparently a common thing that happens but I was very confused, and they broke my front-car-piece-thingy in the process so it was expensive to replace.
2. My Middle-Egyptian-to-English dictionary.
3. A lot of cheap Forever 21 jewelry. Like the stuff you can get 5 of for $5. This was actually hilarious because they broke into my parents’ house just after I had moved (so a lot of my stuff was still there), dumped everything from my jewelry box, including some necklaces that were STILL IN TIFFANY’S BAGS, and then took the absolute cheapest things ever. Although they also took a laptop.
My parents’ house has a porch on the left side, tucked into the house itself so that if you are standing in the driveway, you cannot see the porch. One night, at about one in the morning, my dad was standing on the porch having a cigarette when he noticed a couple of- let’s use literary license and call them “hooligans-” snooping around his car. My dad now had two options:
1. Attempt to creep inside and call the police, hoping that the sound of the door opening and closing did not alert the thieves, or
2. Confront the thieves then and there.
My dad- who is 6’3, two hundred pounds, and a former college football player- chose the latter option. He stepped forward, dropped his cigarette, and bellowed at the top of his voice “GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY CAR!”
They got the fuck away from his car.
Oh, right, the last time I found money.
I don’t remember the last time I kept found money, but not too long ago I spotted a five on the sidewalk that runs through the middle of a nearby block between the school and the basketball courts. I almost bent down to grab it, then realized that even though school was out, odds were good the next person to walk by would be a kid. Five bucks to a child is worth a lot more than five bucks to me, so I left it.
Someone stole the Aerobed out of my trunk, but not the pillow and blanket that were there, too! If you’re going to steal an air mattress, don’t you want to take the rest of the stuff necessary for a nice nap?
Once I had something stolen from me and separately, once someone broke into my car. In college we had little study rooms that only the other people in our same dorm could enter. Figured my awesome, red and black, U2 ipod was relatively safe, it was study week before exams. Went to dining hall. Came back. ipod gone. I was freaking out my mom calmly told me to make flyers and someone would return it, and to not be an idiot and leave your shit unattended. SO I did. and someone DID return it! I don’t know who I just asked they leave it in the hall I lived in and we’d be cool. They must have hated my shitty, freshman year taste in music.
A couple years ago, I, once again, left my shit unattended aka left my car unlocked. Street parking. Logan Sq/Humboldt park neighborhood in chicago. Got to my car and noticed I had a lot of shit everywhere, like someone had been going through everything. They took NOTHING, because really all I had in there were a bunch of chipotle napkins and mix CDs from 2006-2008.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that no one has ACTUALLY stolen something from me but..man…Everyone must really hate my music….
My three things that happened in quick succession (last Friday night):
1. On the way out of the house, stopping to pee, my phone fell out of my back pocket and into the toilet. It sputtered and choked and restarted a few times and finally stopped dead. (The next day it started back up, but sometimes the screen doesn’t recognize my touch. Otherwise all is forgiven.)
2. On my way to the housewarming party, navigating through luck and shoddy memory, through the suburbs, I remember that I am to call my mother because she sent me a text regarding a long-time family friend with a 15-year cancer history. I get to the party and use someone else’s phone, and my mom informs me that this friend is in palliative care. (She died Sunday night; funeral’s on Saturday.)
3. At the party I engage in some fun yet risky entertainment which may or may not have resulted in me accidentally fluid-bonding myself to a perfect stranger. Whups. (I hit the Hassle-Free on Tuesday to see if I had any diseases to share; in three months I’ll find out if I picked any up. Did I say “whups” because I meant aaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.)
Someone stole my tourtiere.
Several years ago, when I was living in Ohio, I flew up to Maine to visit a friend for a few days. My parents, who live in Massachusetts, drove up to see me. We spent some lovely time together, and before my parents left, my mother handed me a tourtiere, which is the most delicious meat pie in the world — especially when it is homemade using my mother’s recipe.
It was wrapped in several layers of protective material. First, Glad Clingwrap. Next, aluminum foil. Next, new dish towels. Next, duct tape. My mother was determined that this tourtiere would survive the trip back to Ohio with me. I marveled at her thoughtful packing technique, and tucked the pie into my suitcase, and left for the airport.
When I disembarked from the plane in Dayton and went to the baggage claim area, my suitcase was not on the carousel. I went to the lost luggage counter, and reported my missing bag. After some investigation, they told me it would be delivered to my home, probably that very evening.
During the drive home from the airport, I fretted a bit about the bag. I had flown into Dayton dozens of times, and had never headed home without my suitcase in the trunk of the car. But just as the airline personnel had promised, the bag was delivered to my door late that evening. I was very happy. And then I opened the suitcase.
No tourtiere. It was gone. Some bastard stole my meat pie.
And I didn’t even dare tell my mother, because she would have been so terribly disappointed. Instead, I told her that the tourtiere she had made and painstakingly packaged up for me was absolutely delicious — probably even her best yet.
I am still upset about the tourtiere, so I think I will try to cheer myself up by mentioning that I once found a $50 bill on the floor of a bar called Frivolous Sal’s, in Poughkeepsie NY. I was a poor college student, and I think I might have spent all the money on beer.
I found a $10 bill on the ground once!! $10!! on the ground!!
I was biking and I saw it and I stopped like three feet in front of it, not even looking at it, just looking ahead thinking I’m going to feel so stupid when it turns out to be $1000 bill of Jesus’s eternal love, but I went back and it was $10!! on the ground!! right there on my way to class!! I spent it.
I dont think I’ve ever had anything stolen. I dont lift things.
I know I’m late to the party, but in high school someone broke into my car. There wasn’t much to steal, but I think maybe they found a small amount of money stashed in my glove compartment (for emergencies, thanks Dad). The joke was on them, though, he or she left an almost full bag of Lay’s potato chips.
My grandmother bought me two nice sweaters for Christmas, to wear to my new restaurant job, the year the economy crashed and my company folded. The sweaters were in a paper bag in the backseat of our car over New Year’s Eve. We drove two days away to celebrate with friends, which I mention only for the context of the distance on the way home. As we rang in the new year, someone smashed our car window and stole the bag. They were nice sweaters, but the thief couldn’t possibly have known. He/she must have made up his mind to steal whatever was in our backseat before breaking the window. Or maybe he was just breaking car windows for fun, and someone else stole them once the glass was shattered.
I thought about calling the store (maybe it was Macy’s?) and telling them not to take the sweaters back, assuming the thief returned them for cash. The receipt was still in the bag. I was angry, but couldn’t think of a thing to do. Would I recognize the sweaters on someone else? What would I say?
We drove home with a plastic bag duct-taped over where the window was supposed to be. It was hard to hear the radio over the sound of the bag, and January temperatures seeped into the car, but we had coats and it became white noise after a few hundred miles. When we stopped the car, our ears were ringing. We were probably speaking in raised voices for a while, the way you do after a concert. My mom sent an old sweater for me to wear to work.
Getting the window repaired was a couple hundred dollars. The next year, somebody stole the car radio, too. We didn’t have any money to replace it. That thief didn’t break a window, and we were grateful for that. But we missed the radio a lot more than the sweaters. We eventually donated the car to a radio station, of all places. A car with no music for DJs to drive. That small window in the back of that particular old car is notoriously easy to break, I learned later. But by the time we let it go, I don’t think there was anything left to steal.
Our house got broken into a few months ago. The burglar took only small personal electronics — work laptops, a personal laptop, a tablet, and old cellphone. But, he also went through our rooms and dumped every single drawer out on the floor.
After hours of cleaning up, the only thing he took that wasn’t a piece of electronics was a box of condoms from my bedside drawer. He left plenty of valuable/easily grab-able things scattered all over our house, but that box of condoms was the one thing that couldn’t be left. I like to think that it was some 16-year-old high school kid with a first girlfriend, who was too embarrassed to buy condoms but really wanted to start having sex. In a way, it’s a little bit of a public service.
Cleaning up glass sucks. Two months later we’re still finding little shards (he broke in by throwing a rock through a sliding-glass door). Hope you can get you car clean without too much trouble!
I was in Belgium just when euros were coming in. Bought a skirt in a market there, found 100francs in the pocket. I was !!!, thought I was In The Money. 100fr turned out to be approx. €2.40, but I was still happy
Clearly, these thieves do not understand the fearsome nature of the Mallory. I’m very sorry to hear it and hope they sustained small glass injuries in this process.
weirdest thing stolen from me:
The most direct thievery I’ve experienced was with someone else’s wallet. I’d gone to the computer lab at school and noticed that some girl had left her wallet full of credit cards/money/etc nearby. I emailed the wallet’s owner ([email protected]) who said she’d stop back at the lab ASAP to pick it up.
So I work on my paper and leave the wallet where it is – near me but still out on the big long workdesk. And I mean near like within 4-6 inches of my physical personal being. At some point a blur of scrawny teenage guy sweeps in, grabs the wallet, and races out. I start to race after him but pause to collect my own papers etc and then just have no idea where to look. To my very great relief, no one involved was at all suspicious of the veracity of my story.
Weirdest thing I’ve found just laying around (and thus vulnerable to stealing):
A corpse. I took art classes at a community college in HS, and would wander around campus during our 15 min break. Once I wandered into an empty biology classroom containing – one naked dead body on the front table, one cell phone, and one open textbook. I remember musing over which would be costliest/worst/most annoying to need replacing.
See, I’m deeply amused by the guy whose gf’s thieves were polite enough to leave her sex toys. My apartment was broken into last month, and they took all of mine, ALL OF THEM, from three separate locations. They also stole condoms (male and female), dental dams, a corset, and my lint brush. (That’s not the entirety of what they stole, for sure, but those are the weirdest things.)
Some asshole’s girlfriend is very satisfied right now.