When I was moving out of the dorms, someone stole my folding directors chair. I had left it unattended while I grabbed another load of stuff out of my room, and when I came back, it was gone.
Now it wasn’t all that special, but it was the only piece of actual furniture I owned, and the only thing that I’d have to furnish my new apartment with.
So I went knocking door to door, asking if anyone had seen a chair. Finally, I knocked on a door and a bunch of guys were sitting in a circle passing around a bong. One of those guys was sitting on my chair. I asked for it back. The whole adventure was pretty much worth it just to hear the guy make excuses about why he took such a stupid thing that obviously belonged to someone.
There were a lot of other young people living in the building, and we knew most of them. Things like jeans and shirts were disappearing, but it wasn’t until the day I walked down the hall and saw a girl from upstairs wearing MY shirt did we figure out where the stuff was going. She ran out the door, into her car and took off. I called the police, but they didn’t do anything. My rommate and I were moving out anyways, and I forgot all about it until now.
Someone stole the left rear side identification light lens off of my car once. I guess they needed one. It was easy to see that the two retaining screws had been removed, as opposed to the possibility of it having been sheared off by a close encounter.
Another schemer decided, I guess, that he’d avoid the noise of shattering glass by digging the entire rear window frame out of my car. It must have taken some time, and he broke the glass anyway. While he stole the console, which, assumed from what of it was left, was not in saleable condition, his big score was the radio, for which I figured he got a max of $20, if anything. That, for rendering $2000 in damage to the car.
Someone broke into my Datsun pickup one night and stole my prescription sunglasses. Cheaper than drugs, I suppose.
And when I worked for a company in a high-rise in downtown Houston, we regularly had cheap calculators disappear, along with the occasional adding machine. And a telephone once. Never anything with a street value over ~$6. This, from offices packed to the gills with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of confidential geophysical/geological data.
Car break-in: (well the door was unlocked, call it a car reach-in)
-Beat-up, giant, ancient roasting pan coming home from family pot-luck;
-Bob Marley & The Legends EMPTY cassette case (tape itself left in player);
-Stinky, furry old dog’s blanket;
-about 35 cents in change;
I always wondered why they didn’t just pop the trunk (the button’s right on the driver’s door) and take my well-stocked emergency road kit c/w large, heavy-duty nylon duffle, or the never-even-used jumper cables, or my then-collection of car CD’s & mixed tapes, or the expensive, hard-to-find mover’s blanket. A homeless person could have made use of some of the stuff in the kit, and the mover’s blanket would have been a great score. If it were kids, they surely would have taken the tapes & CD’s. They didn’t even break anything. A kinder, gentler snatch-and-run.
Apartment break-in; they got some good stuff (most of my jewelry, some of it antiques from my grandparents), my guitar, my boombox, and my telephone (brand-new cordless, when they first came out, so expensive). However, they also took my dish of laundry quarters, half a roll of toilet paper, and a half-empty box of condoms. Boy, was I frustrated about the condoms; naturally, I discovered their loss at the worst possible moment. Yay for the convenience store downstairs!
Later, during a car burglary: smashed my car window to take my beat-up gym bag, which at the time contained a 99-cent pair of flip-flops and a somewhat mildewed towel and swimsuit. Cost almost $200 to fix the car window, though. Boy, was I pissed!
Back when I was still a small kid, we got this bicycle rack for our car. It seemed so wonderful, because my cousin and I like to bike, and now we could take our bikes with us. But sometimes my father parked the car outside. So for safety, we kept part of the rack in the house. Then one day, rather unexpectedly, we noticed someone had stolen half of the bike rack!! Their part by itself was of no use to them, and our part by itself was no use to us–so why did they take it?! Pretty silly, don’t you think?
But I always think back to my old departed grandfather when he was in the nursing home. It was a real nice home, but one day my parents gave him shortbread cookies–and some (presumably elderly) person stole them! But my grandfather said something that day that stuck with me:
Many years ago, I went to a movie and lost my wallet there. Inside my wallet was a $10 dollar bill and about a small amount of marijuana.
The theatre called me telling me I left the wallet there. I was afraid the cops were there to nab me. Well no police, I was relieved. The 10 dollar bill was in the wallet. The pot hopped out and ran away.
I had my wallet stolen once. This would have been quite a sensible thing for someone to steal … if it had actually contained anything more than an out-of-date note about a dental appointment.
My dad, who owns a prosthetics business also contracts out mastectomy products (breast forms for cancer victims). He had a transvestite come in and try some on…he said he’d be right back, that he had to grab his checkbook from his car. He didn’t come back in.
That night, he threw a car jack through the window and made off with about 2000 dollars worth of fake breasts. He passed over mountains of powertools and equipment, computers, the keys to the company car parked outside, even the company checkbook…all he took was breasts.
Not to me but to one of my customers, a bowling alley,
someone broke into the lounge, broke the locked glass door to the beer cooler and stole only one brand of beer.
In second grade the girl who sat across from me in class stole my mini-bag of chips every day, right out of my lunchbox. (My lunchbox was always kept under my desk, so I’m assuming she’d dive down there when I wasn’t looking and perform her nefarious thievery.) I would see her across the table in the cafeteria, cheerfully munching on my chips, denying through every mouthful that they were mine.
Eventually my mother wrote my initials on a bag one day, and when little Gracelynn began denying that “her” chips were mine, I triumphantly showed her my initials on the bag.
She cried and cried and wouldn’t give me my chips back…but she never did it again.
Three months ago someone stole my favorite winter coat out of my car…it was an ancient Goodwill find that looked remarkably like Paddington Bear’s and I can’t figure out what the hell anyone else would want with it. Luckily I never lock my car–since if they want in they’ll just break the window and there’s never anything in my car worth more than replacing the window–so that was my only loss.
I would have to say the most inane thing I ever had stolen was the Carpet out of my old apartment. The carpet must have been 5-6 yeatrs old. Actually, everything in the apartment was taken. I never saw anything like it. They took it all. The carpet, the padding, appliances, even the pedestal sink in the bathroom. I thought I was in the wrong building. The appartment manager said he saw the truck pull up and since I told him I was thinking of moving he never bothered to actually check that it was me. It was actually a good thing that I was a starving student at that time. Everything I had of value was in my truck at the time.
I don’t know why this sticks out in my mind, but when I was 8 years old my older sister was complaining that her lip gloss had been stolen from the car while we were inside of Sears.
My mom also had the radio antenna to her car stolen once. Nothing special about it, just an ordinary antenna.
As for me, I can’t think of anything inane that was ever stolen. The only thing I can remember ever being stolen from me at all was my bicycle, certainly nothing inane about that.
I had the gas cap stolen off my old car, when it was parked in the apartment building lot. It wasn’t anything special, just the one that came with the car. Someone snipped the plastic tether that it was on (so you don’t forget your gas cap at a gas station) and took it - I’m assuming they lost theirs and found that stealing mine was more convenient than driving less than a quarter mile and paying a few bucks for a new one. I did that the morning of my car’s emissions test. (When I pulled up at the testing center, the attendant asked if my car had previously failed; apparently a lot of cars with new gas caps have due to an older gas cap. I explained what had actually happened.)
My husband just had his coffee mug stolen at his workplace. He thought that was so stupid because he’s had nice walkmen and other things in his drawers, but someone took a mug.
A few years ago, I was in the process of moving from SC to FL. The movers had come and already picked up the majority of my stuff. I was packing up the cat and dog and had whatever I needed to survive (without all my stuff) until the movers showed up in FL. I left the car doors open in the parking lot and ran into my apt. to grab the dog and cat. Meanwhile, a neighbor across the parking lot was sitting on her balcony, watching me struggle with getting all my stuff packed into the car. When I came back out with the beasties… she shouted down to me, “Is anything missing from your car?” I looked quickly and didn’t see anything obvious. She then told me that some little girl, about 12 years old, was walking through the parking lot, stopped by my car, bent down and took something out of the front seat. I thanked my neighbor for stopping the theivery :rolleyes:, shoved my animals in the car and took off. Seven hours later, while unpacking the car, I figured out what was missing.
A seashell. Large clamshell that I used for an ashtray. It was sitting in a plant in the front seat. If the little girl had asked, I’d have given her a clean one. I have dozens…
A couple years later, I laid a bunch of clam shells out in my front yard flowerbed. A block away, down the street, there is a large elementary school. Dozens of kids walk by my house on their way to school every day. Within a week, all the shells had disappeared.
I also had my purse snatched once – the snatcher got $8 in quarters – I was about to do laundry that night.
Some years ago, I put someone up for a month while they were between places. When he finally moved into his new place, I discovered a few minor items had gone missing. The most inane item was a videotape of the original Godzilla movie, recorded off of television. (In fact, I recovered all the items except that tape – then the movie was on TV again a few months later.)
After a basketball game, I was at my locker post-shower. I was essentially changed and cleaned up. There were a few extra people in the locker room. A couple of press people, some friends and family of players. Mostly people I did not recognize.
At that point, I realized that my shirt was over in the training room where I took it off prior to the game. I go to get the shirt. I come back to my locker. I notice that my mouth guard is missing. Not the case it was sitting in. Not the shoes, the mutiple jerseys or shorts or socks. My still saliva soaked, custom fit mouth guard.
Near as I could figure, someone either had kleptomania tendencies and it looked easiest to conceal or I had a stalker that thought I could be cloned from spit.
