We are midway through October and I feel as though I have lived a small lifetime in these scant two weeks. Full disclosure: this entire post contains (un-)remarkably First-World problems. I am sufficiently self-aware to know and appreciate that we are all safe, dry and fed, and for that I am always thankful.

It really peaked the Thursday before Thanksgiving: having run out to warm the car before the school run, (’cause We the North!) we were literally getting our coats on in the fron hall when I got a call from the neighbour.

Neighboyr: “Hi! Ummmm, I think your car’s just been stolen!”

Me: “Hi! What?”

(you know that feeling when you are hearing something that your ears take in but your sluggish early-morning hippocampus just refuses to process?)

Neighbour: “I was just looking outside and I saw this lady walk by your car, stop and look left, then look right, and then she hopped in your car and drove off!”

Me: “Thank you. I need to hang up and call the police now”.

And so it began. Or rather continued. I kept physically walking by my front door and opening it, helplessly looking longingly out to see if this was a joke, or if it wasn’t a joke, perhaps the thief had had a change of heart and returned it. It’s not like it was worth stealing anyways: old, basic and ugly with a freshly-dented back gate from the rear-ender we were involved in the week previously. (Oh yeah, did I mention? Rear-ended on the way to school to perform volunteer traffic duty: choke me with the irony!)

Thankfully a very kind neighbour drove one to the bus and I walked the other one to school after a kind but fruitless visit with the local law enforcement. I kept looking out that door all day, numb with shock over what had happened. That it was simply gone.

I am not naive enough to think that my neighbourhood is somehow immune to random crime, and I’ve never NIMBY’ed, but this was a jolt. I mean, I have been warming up my car for as long as I have had it, and it’s a 2010 for goodness’ sake.

So I filed police reports and insurance claims and kept looking out my front door.

Slowly becoming comfortably numb…

POSTSCRIPT:

The van was found a day later, out of gas, locked and abandoned. It had become a statistic: used in a string of petty thefts, (multiple families’ mail and chequebooks were found inside), it was mildly crashed up, reeking of pot, with a small dime bag left as a bonus. The two mysteries were (a)the thieves were present enough to lock it before abandoning it, and (b) there was a worn paperback novel detailing the musical British Invasion of the sixties…go figure.