{"id":5245,"date":"2011-05-18T11:22:05","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T17:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/?p=5245"},"modified":"2022-12-28T16:24:34","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T22:24:34","slug":"oh-yeah-this-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/memphis\/oh-yeah-this-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh yeah, this happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I unlocked my car to go to work last week, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/theogeo\/5713844619\/in\/photostream\">this is what I saw<\/a>. I wondered if Ray had gotten into the car in desperate, paper-thrashing need of finding, uh, a stick of gum or something, so I went back inside and asked him if he&#8217;d been rifling through my car. And of course the answer was no, so I asked him to come look at the inside of my car, which was covered not only in rummaged-through papers, but also had half the back seat turned down with my coffee cup sitting on top. I don&#8217;t keep what you would call a clean car, but I certainly didn&#8217;t leave my car in that horrible shape the night before. I swear to you, I thought a raccoon had gotten in there or something. I am a naive, sheltered little country girl.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/theogeo\/5714412366\/\" title=\"Untitled by theogeo, on Flickr\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3629\/5714412366_8060a645be_z.jpg\" width=\"300\" style=\"float:right\" alt=\"\"><\/a><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s when he noticed that my rear passenger stationary window was busted out and there was shattered glass inside and outside the car.<\/p>\n<p>I dropped a few F-bombs and inspected the damage, and started to realize, slowly, what had happened. Six and a half years in Memphis and this is the first time I&#8217;ve been hit, so it took me a minute to get my head around it. Ray went inside to get the non-emergency police number while I tried to get a good idea of what, if anything, had been taken. Turns out my huge book of CDs and my iPhone charger had made an exit. Such coveted prizes, I guess. That should net the thief maybe $30. Half those CDs were scratched as shit and a good deal of them were homemade mixed CDs from friends. Those are the ones I&#8217;m most sore about, really, because I hadn&#8217;t ripped many of them since my iTunes refused to fetch the song names for me.<\/p>\n<p>Fun fact: The thief left my galoshes and rain coat in the hatch. I paid more than $60 for the boots and the coat is easily worth $30. Dumbass. But thanks, dumbass, for leaving my rain gear. I suppose it&#8217;s good I left the BSMF mud on both as a deterrent.<\/p>\n<p>We waited several minutes but a squad car finally showed up, and I was impressed that they dusted for prints. We had speculated about how the thief busted the window, and noticed a notch taken out of the metal surrounding the window, like he&#8217;d used a tool and needed leverage (thanks, <i>CSI: Sunglasses City<\/i>!). Sure enough, the officer said the thief had most likely used a screwdriver used to pop the window out. Then he unlocked the door and trawled around inside the car for a good while. I really hope he took a swig out of that coffee cup. It had been in there through three seasons.<\/p>\n<p>I had gotten home at midnight the night before, and we were awake and staring at the TV until 3ish, so it surely must have happened after that. Or we didn&#8217;t hear it, despite the fact that it happened 20 feet from the front window. And our neighbor&#8217;s idiot dogs, who generally howl and raise hell any time I step outside to water my plants or walk across the yard, deigned to stay silent during an actual property violation.<\/p>\n<p>The officer said he got some good prints but there was no telling whose they were or if they&#8217;d get a reliable hit on them. We asked if this sort of thing happened in the area very often, and he said that this was the first in a long time. My neighbor Peter came over and said my neighbor Lauren had a Jeep get broken into in her driveway (the one adjacent to mine) several years ago. Then, after the police left, another neighbor whose name I don&#8217;t know came by and said that on his walk, he&#8217;d seen a couple of cars around the corner with busted-out windows. I guess that means they hadn&#8217;t reported them yet?<\/p>\n<p>Ray taped a bag over the busted window to keep out the rain that was forecasted that night, and we went about our business, daydreaming of ways to build a sniper tower in the tree and pick off hot-handed creeps intent on taking my shit again.<\/p>\n<p>And now, I will move on to two PSAs.<\/p>\n<p>1. Contact MLGW if you see any streetlights that are out. The streetlight closest to my house had been out for a few weeks and it was mildly annoying because it created a black spot on the street that was pretty creepy, but I lazily did nothing about it because I am an apathetic American who has cable. And then, bam. My super dark driveway became a crime hotspot and I became a statistic. So if you know of a street light that is out, the best thing to do is take a gander up close at it and write down the numbers embossed on the little metal plates. And then <a href=\"https:\/\/service.mlgw.org\/streetlightoutage\/streetlight_outage.php\">click here<\/a> and file those numbers with MLGW. Your and your neighbors&#8217; crappy CD collections could be at stake.<\/p>\n<p>2. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.morrisglass.com\/\">Jack Morris Auto Glass<\/a> did an awesome job on my window. They had a one-day turnaround time, and the window plus labor was only $170. I&#8217;m sure someone out there will see that number and think I got ripped off, but they were so super nice to me AND they cleaned up all the broken glass in my car, which I was absolutely not expecting them to do. I am very happy I went there and will certainly go there again should some deviant jackbag decide to rifle through my car again without first asking my permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I unlocked my car to go to work last week, this is what I saw. I wondered if Ray had gotten into the car in desperate, paper-thrashing need of finding, uh, a stick of gum or something, so I went back inside and asked him if he&#8217;d been rifling through my car. And of course the answer was no, so I asked him to come look at the inside of my car, which was&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[332,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bitchy-mccomplainsalot","category-memphis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1jWWl-1mB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5245"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8171,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5245\/revisions\/8171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}