The Worst Burglar in the World

I've managed to piece together what happened on my front porch last night.

Someone tiptoed up to the steps of our porch after we had been asleep a couple hours and thought he/she had scored big time, as there, on the porch, was a box from a US Postal Service Express Mail. The box was left there by my long-suffering wife Jan who had to move some stuff around in the front room. The box wasn't opened, because Jan knew what was in it and she wouldn't be needing it until the onset of next semester, 6 weeks from now.

Anyway, here's our stone steps, porch light not working. And next to the front door is a box, unopened and rather heavy. Sometime when my CPAP machine is on and Jan's sleeping too, someone makes the perilous trip up our unlit steps, snags the unopened box and hightails it.

Next morning one of my neighbors who was walking his dog calls on the house line and says he's found a bunch of accounting books alongside a box addressed to Jan, who he has Googled. So I load the dogs up and go to the corner of the old airport the guy told me about, and sure enough there is a pile of accounting texts that came from a box (still alongside) that was addressed to Jan at our house.

So, the worst burglar in the world takes the box thinking that he'd struck it big with, well, at least a fruitcake. No such luck. Accounting textbooks. A couple hundred dollars of accounting textbooks, some of which Jan wrote.

At this point I'm struck with the ironic content of this whole episode. The burglar abandoned the books, but if he/she could just see beyond the immediate needs which drove he/she to the crime . . . he/she could have used these books to study for his/her CPA exam and launched themselves on a career as a Certified Public Accountant.

But that's not how things go across the street at the Princeton Apartments (don't let the name fool ya), which did a nose dive when burglars and pimps moved in around 2005. Delwood II hasn't been the same since. Not that this was any big deal. We've lost a lot more than this through the years, and we've lost a lot less than some of our neighbors. Our dogs are the first line of defense, and I might have missed their barking last night when I was in my mask.

That's it for me too. I'm going to fix that porch light, and maybe add a security camera.