You stole:

• My Apple ear­buds, which I did­n’t care much about, cause they’re shit­ty and feel like stale muffins in your ears. The only rea­son I had these in the car was to talk hands­free while dri­ving. Which was prob­a­bly only three times a year, but very use­ful when need­ed.
• About $20 in change, which is more than I need for park­ing, but this was also the spon­ta­neous junk food fund.
• My GPS charg­er, which was in case the bat­tery dies on the road (cause I hate dri­ving with it plugged in). I don’t keep my GPS in the car when it’s cold to pre­serve the bat­tery, and I haven’t need­ed it since the win­ter. I’m pret­ty sure you would have stolen my GPS if it was in there.
• My iPhone charg­er, which was brand-spank­ing new, and used for long road trips.
• My aux­il­liary audio cable, which I use to play my iPhone tracks over my car stereo. I was think­ing of replac­ing it any­way cause it was way too long and the bunched cable looked like clut­ter, but I was still annoyed by the fact that I had to dri­ve 10 min­utes to the near­est Circuit City to buy anoth­er with­out being able to lis­ten to the music I want­ed.

You did­n’t steal:

• My wheel locks, which would have been no use to you with­out the key, and annoy­ing for me to replace. So…thanks?
• My assort­ed music CDs, which I need­ed an excuse to clean up any­way, so you not tak­ing them did­n’t do my any favours. They were also real­ly good songs, and not steal­ing them prob­a­bly means your taste in music sucks.
• My mod­el cat, which I keep in the back seat and has been get­ting mixed reviews late­ly. About 50% of peo­ple are fine with it, and 50% are real­ly creeped out because they think it’s real and refuse to sit in the back unless I put it in the trunk. But it was a present from my uncle in Hong Kong, so I’m real­ly glad you did­n’t take it.
• My emer­gency blan­ket and can­dles, which I felt like you should have tak­en, because I can’t imag­ine you being very warm if you’re a pet­ty crook.

I have to won­der if you were so upset about not find­ing any­thing valu­able that you decid­ed to steal things that aren’t even worth sell­ing or fenc­ing, out of spite. It was­n’t enough to make a claim on my insur­ance, so I have to buy this stuff again. But I don’t real­ly need any of it, except for the aux­il­iary cable, which I replaced with a fan­cy new retract­ing set and with which I’m much hap­pi­er.

Just this week I was read­ing about that colonel being charged with a string of break-ins to steal under­wear, and how the peo­ple in that neigh­bour­hood felt shak­en at the news. I empathized with them, and felt lucky that it did­n’t hap­pen near me.

But when I came out of my house and found the con­tents of my glove com­part­ment spilled onto the pas­sen­ger seat, I was remind­ed that this is a fact of life every­one is forced to accept, because no one is immune. It’s a nec­es­sary evil, to remind peo­ple that putting too much val­ue in our pos­ses­sions means we only have more to lose.

The only thing that both­ers me is that I feel vio­lat­ed. I’m pret­ty sure I locked my car, but there’s no sign of forced entry, so I won­der how you got in and whether you now have free access. I can’t change my park­ing spot. My car will always be there, so now I need to keep any­thing valu­able out of it. Not that big a deal real­ly, but it’s less con­ve­nient to have to remem­ber to bring change any time I want to park down­town. Also, in the spring I like to keep all the win­dows of my house open, and now I won’t feel safe doing that when I’m sleep­ing on a dif­fer­ent floor.

But I still con­sid­er myself lucky. Lucky you did­n’t make out with more than $100 worth of stuff. Lucky my first expe­ri­ence with theft was rel­a­tive­ly minor, and an inex­pen­sive les­son learned. Lucky I’ve been feel­ing good late­ly and that this inci­dent is only a small blip on my radar.

I can only hope that you used the change to feed your­self, because if you’re steal­ing ran­dom shit from cars, you prob­a­bly need the mon­ey more than I do.

But, please, don’t do it again, cause to be hon­est, I’d rather it was me eat­ing those McDonald’s french fries on Friday night.