In my more naive youth left a perfectly fine 10 speed outside the gym at college one afternoon when I went inside to play hoops for a bit. Came back out, and it was gone. It had a distinctive squeak tho, and one day I heard that squeak as a guy pedaled by me, but wtf am I to say to the bozo, the cops if any showed up would undoubtedly charge me if I tried to get it back.
Not in the poll but the only other theft I have endured was a storage unit being broken into, but it had little of value, where the only things missing were an old TV and an old set of golf clubs.
I have only sort of been mugged. The mugger grabbed my wallet; I did not let go. Eventually, he said, “Fine! Take your wallet!” and moved on to easier (or less foolhardy) targets.
It feels like I’ve been fortunate in having very few bad/criminal things happen to me over the course of my life. I’ve never been the victim of a violent crime, and none of my friends or loved ones has, either. One of my now-former girlfriends was sexually assaulted, but that was a year or two before I met her, so I didn’t know her (and wasn’t dating her) when it happened.
I’ve been in a number of fender-bender collisions while driving (some my fault, some not), but the only serious collision I’ve ever been in was when I hit a deer at 60 mph.
Our house was broken into when I was 13; it was part of a string of petty thefts committed by the kid who was our newspaper delivery person, and a couple of his friends; the delivery kid knew when people were going to be on vacation (because he was responsible for not delivering the paper on those dates), and he coordinated the break-ins. Mostly, they stole minor valuables (money, some jewelry), but they also trashed my room, because they knew me. The police quickly figured out who did it, and the “ring” got some sort of juvenile probation, and had to return everything that they had stolen (they had hung onto all of it).
My car was broken into, while parked at the CTA “L” train station, about 20 years ago. They smashed in the driver’s-side window, but all they took was about $10 in change from a cubby in the center console. The cop said that there had been a rash of such break-ins, done by homeless people who were looking for easily-sold items, which they could peddle on the L train. As I did not have anything like that (e.g., hip-hop CDs) in the car, they found nothing else useful to take.
I forgot that this is how my uncle died! It took several months for him to succumb to his injuries, so that now, a year later, I mostly remember the time in hospital and forgot the cause. I’d best change my poll response.
I don’t feel like any of those things have happened to me. As mentioned earlier, I did have my car broken into once, but they didn’t take anything, so I don’t think it rises to the level of “having shit stolen from my vehicle”. I was involved in a few car accidents, both my fault and the other driver’s fault, but none of them meet the definition of “serious” in the poll – no one was injured and the vehicles were still operable after all of them.
I was mugged once in a parking lot by a young man who was more scare than I was- his gun hand was shaking, which was a bit alarming. I acted cool, handing him my cash and he ran off.
I remember my one cousin sitting down and carefully plotting how to fake his own death. But that was about 40 years ago – faking one’s death in the modern age, if it could be pulled off, would leave a person in a pretty difficult position.
I had a Volvo wagon that was broken into nightly by someone sleeping in it. Never saw them but it was plain that someone was using it for a nightime crash pad. I didn’t care since they never took anything or messed it up. It was winter and cold.
If you count nursing as eating, I’ve seen kittens purr as they suckle every time we had kittens. (We used to regularly foster pregnant cats and their litters until the kittens were old enough to adopt. So we’ve had lots of kittens.)
I read a funny article about a guy on nyc who realized this, because his radio was set to a Spanish station he didn’t listen to, and small objects were sometimes moved. Then he realized that the guy was essentially free nighttime security for the car. So he put a nice blanket in the back seat. Every morning, the blanket was neatly folded.
We used to have a cat who had a very loud purr. When he was eating (one of his favorite activities), his purring was very audible, punctuated each time he chewed.
Old American cars didn’t tie the electrical system to turning the key. I guess modern cars didn’t, either. For instance, the interior lights go on when you open the door.