Thank God my stereo was stolen read this

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The start of my life’s awaking starting with a simple act of burglary.

I awoke on Friday morning, ready to start the day. I have a habit of coming to work early because I like my job. I am a financial aid advisor for a junior college. I like working and who I work with.

So I stumble down the stairs of my delapitated apartment complex, the only place that someone that works in education can afford in my area, and approach my car. This is a 1987 Honda Accord, something that my brother and I built so I can get back and forth to work because I don’t have enough money to buy something because I work in education. All in all, I have about $85 in the car. But it gets me from A to B. I saved up a bit, and got a CD player. I had it for about six days.

Anyways, I am approaching the car. I notice that the door is sort of hanging open. Dammit! The doors, which were off of another car, kind of sag and I figured that I didn’t shut it good enough. Well, there is another dead battery. Great, I am going to be late to work.

I open the car door only to find that my stereo and speakers were ripped off and my dashboard is royally fucked up. The heater doesn’t function anymore. My hood is popped open, and there is about a mile of vacuum hose rearranged. Fuck! Dammit! I can’t have anything nice! Woe is me!

I get to work, late, after repairing much of the vacuum line to get my car to start and drive. I spend the first hour walking around bitching about my recent brush with crime, drumming up sympathy by the loads.

When I settle down to work, I open my first file of the day. An income reduction request. These are generally filed by a student trying to rip off the system. I tell myself, well here is another person that wants something for nothing. And I grumble and him and haw to myself. Then I read. (paraphrased to protect identity of persons involved)

“I am filing this income reduction request for reprocessing of my financial aid because I am now the sole breadwinner of my household. I know that I am not supposed to drop my classes while I am on financial aid, but I had to drop a few. I am still a half time student though, so I can keep my student loans. My husband was working on our minivan last night. It broke down and he was trying to fix it up so we could get our kids to school in the morning. He was working on it late and someone came up to our house and shot him in the head with a shot gun at close range. They stole some of his tools and ran away. They have still not found the person who shot him. My eight year old son was the first one to find him.”

Attached was his death certificate. I sat back in my office and felt so alone for this woman. She has a 3.8 GPA. She wants to be in health care.

The phone then rang, and I was informed by the division secretary that I was late for my conference with the blank scholarship committee. (Blank to protect identity.)

Fuck, okay. So I go to this meeting and discover that none of these full ride receiving students have at least a B average in high school. I think to myself, well, hey man! I had a 3.5! Where was my free ride to college! I had to work myself through. Then the first applicant came through. She was a single mother, a senior in high school. I say, well, of course. Pbbssh…

The student was a victim of rape. She decided to keep the child that was conceived because she thought that perhaps something good comes from everything bad. She knew her GPA wasn’t great, but she had been working so much to provide for her and her grandmother. Her grandmother was disabled, but was able to take care of her baby while she was working on being the first person in her family in graduating high school. Her mother was dead and her father was in prison.

The person who raped her was a non-related uncle who was murdered soon after in a drug related crime.

“I know my grades aren’t very good, but if you can only believe me, I will finish school and become a teacher. I have a teacher, Mrs **, and she knows what happened to me. I wanted to quit school but she believed in me and stayed late to help me learn everything that I needed to learn to get this far. I want to be just like Mrs ***.”

I sat through six more interviews that were just as graphic. When the time came around for me to say my part in the interview process, I had nothing to say. They all deserve it.

And they all got it.

As I was driving home, I thought to myself, thank God my stereo was stolen. And that was all that happened to me today, this week, this year, this decade. I am so damn lucky.

2

WOW.

Kind of puts it all in perspective.

3

That first story, now that’s messed up. Thank goodness it was only your stereo and damaged doors.

4

My profession is the news business; I shoot news in our nation’s capitol. I get to see the very worst every day I go to work.

And yet I am undyingly optimistic. Not because everyone cares. Not because everyone is good. Only because there are enough to mean something. And more often than not you will find them where you are not looking.

5

Gratefulness is a dying trait. Props to you brother.

6

Thanks for reading.

7

Nope, I bet that wasn’t the start of your life’s awakening, you know. I somehow think you sound like a pretty decent and aware sort to begin with.

But what horrible stories. :frowning: And it’s sort of humbling to see people survive such things without giving up. Yes, I’m glad the worst thing that happened to you was the car stereo, but I like your sense of perspective, and I am sure you will be doing your best for all the (deserving) students.

Let’s hope some good things happen soon. :slight_smile:

[edited for typo]

8

Now, I am not in the USA, but when I had to get a death certificate for someone in the UK it took a little effort.

While I know that when something strange happens, one flips into mechanical mode, however getting a death certificate and writing ‘last night …’ is a bit odd.

For a start a shot gun to the head would render the corpse hard to identify, and I don’t think that anyone would write out a DC within … say 3 days.

There is something peculiar there, either creative writing or dumb creative writing.

If you are not playing games and practising your tear jerking tales, then he is alive and kicking.
Shotguns are terribly messy, and messes take time for bureacracy to sort out.

Either you are conning us, or you are being conned

  • if the latter, then be very careful - stupid people are much deadlier than smart people.
9

Paging Gabrielle

10

**FRDE **-

I’m no expert (I just write the obituaries), but over here (at least, in my town), a death certificate is issued as soon as cause of death is determined. If the guy was shot in the head, that was most likely what killed him. Any coroner or funeral director who is a coroner can issue a death certificate, and a copy is sent to the surviving family ASAP, so that they can get things taken care of like life insurance, as most mortuaries don’t like taking payments and want their money up front.

When a good family friend of ours died in a car accident, his family had a death certificate for him by the end of the day. When another family friend shot himself in the head, they had a death certificate the next morning. It’s not that uncommon over here because you need cause of death to process life insurance policies and cancel existing accounts, etc.

Translucent Daydream - Wow, man. I was just sitting here upset because my entire check is going to be used to pay bills, and therefore we’re not gonna have a huge food budget. Puts things in persective. Good God, am I glad I can afford to pay my bills.

~Tasha

11

Good post. Really helps to put the little things in life in perspective.

12

As you can see I live rather a long way away

  • but I don’t think a headless corpse would have a DC on the night of death

To put it crudely anyone with half a brain cell would be scraping his teeth from the ground - and wondering about his dental records.
Also his fingerprints would be interesting.

I smell creative writing.

13

Wouldn’t the fact that it was in her driveway be a clue that it may have been her husband, since he probably wasn’t around later?

14

There are other ways to identify a corpse than by the face. Clothes, tattoos, scars, etc. And not all gunshot wounds to the head blow the face away.

15

Damn, guess you got me figured out… :rolleyes:

16

Your OP moved me to tears. A dear friend of mine was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and I’ve felt so awful for her (still do) - and then I see a news piece about a young mother who died in a car accident. There’s always someone who has it worse.

The skepticism about the minivan repair murder does make some sense - I was going to write that perhaps she typed out the narrative the next day, and then received the death certificate a day or two later and mailed them in together. But then I thought - heck - if MY husband was murdered, I don’t think my very first act would be to ask the school for financial aid. I’d want the police report, frankly.

17

My mother was saying “Jaime died yesterday” a month after he did. And we got a “provisional death certificate” within one hour. In the case of a person who dies in the hospital there is always a pretty cursory autopsy (“yep, that’s definitely lung cancer”) unless the family requests a full autopsy - but even if a full autopsy is requested, a provisional can be issued. Just pointing out (for, what, the ten thousandth time?) that procedures change a lot between countries.

18

Have you ever actually been in the situation?

I ask that without rancor. It’s odd, the things that go through your head when someone is taken without warning. For a few hours, sometimes, it’s like someone just smashed you in the head with a hammer – that same dazed feeling, not going away. But before long comes the need to do something, anything, anything that’s constructive. The house is clean, the dishes are put away, and you’re going through the insurance paperwork because doing something logical and useful and necessary and sane is the only thing that keeps you from collapsing into a little heap.

You’re doing it like a zombie, but it’s better than letting it all touch you. Taking care of business, even if it’s the business of cleaning up after a dead loved one, is almost a form of denial.

YMMV, but it smells true enough to me.

19

I’ve experienced the death of people close to me and had a lot of mundane details to attend to. While doing them, somewhere my mind was wondering how on earth I could. Why wasn’t I reduced to incompetence, with all I had to face?

The fact is grief comes, and it stays. If there are things you have to take care of, somehow God gives us a window where we can take care of them. She’s the sole breadwinner of the family and she’s GOT to stay in school. Better get that letter off to the school. The coming weeks and months, are what will be hard. Poor woman.

Thanks for sharing your stories, td.

20

My mom was a police officer; my father in law is a paramedic. As you can imagine both have spent their share of time in hospital emergency rooms. According to both of them, when there is no evidence to hold up the process (unsure of identity, for example), death certificates are available pretty much as soon as the body goes to the morgue. Which happens fairly quickly.

You assume that the shotgun blast splattered his skull. This is not necessarily (or even likely) the case, despite what you may have seen on TV. Unless the blast is contained – say, if he had the barrel in his mouth – it’s not likely to completely destroy the head to the point where dental record ID is necessary. I speak here based on my perusal of a police manual (circa 1972, I believe) which showed, among other things, the various effects a 12-gauge had on the human head. The only one where the head effectively disintegrated was the suicide where the man had placed the barrel in his mouth before pulling the trigger, and even that had a recognizable face. It just wasn’t attached to the head anymore, is all. The only shot I can think of that would result in no recognizable face would be from a foot or so away from the back of the skull, which is possible but hardly likely in a typical robbery scenario; you’re more likely to see a hit pattern to the face or side of the head, from a longer distance.

Could she be scamming? Sure. But I’d be inclined to believe her if she provided a D.C.