I have had a couple bad pennies show up, but one comes to mind very quickly. I knew him when we were kids. We pretty much started hanging out when I was 15, and he was younger than me by about a year. We’ll call him - Joe.
I really liked hanging out with him. My family took care of him a lot, since he had some family issues. His father had been in trouble when he was younger and his mother lived half-way across the country. He lived with his grandmother. When I was 16, we often went to thrift stores and bought shirts and such, one day I came back and found money was missing from my parents house. They asked me, and accused me, but as soon as I said he was alone downstairs for a few minutes while I ran upstairs, they let up on it and said I shouldn’t bring him around anymore.
I confronted him, he told me he hadn’t taken it, but for the next for weeks he had money (and no job). I got angry when he made comments about how hard it was to get money from his family for anything, and how he wanted to borrow some from me for lunch, then after lunch went and bought cigarettes with his own money and figured I just wouldn’t have anything to do with him anymore.
When I turned 18, I worked day shift, so I spent a lot of time going out in the early evening to drink with friends who worked the same shift as me. My good friend and I went swimming down at a pond, met up with a few other people, and went to his parents. He mentioned that he ran into Joe the other day. I thought nothing of it. That weekend, we were hanging out at the same house and he showed up at the house. It turned out that he’d stayed down there the day before, and was there today, and so I left. The next day, said friend explained that he took Joe into town to drop him off that night, and noticed his money from his car was missing. It had been in the glovebox, inside a little altoids tin, and Joe was left alone in the car while they stopped to get gas.
I figured I wouldn’t want anything to do with Joe again. I moved away to college and didn’t think about it. I transferred to another school at the end of the semester, and my mother called about two days later. Her house had been broken into and the person took money, food, and a cell phone. The phone was used to call Joe’s father 45 minutes later, and his grandmother about an hour and a half later, before it was shut off by the phone company once it was reported. The police said that was not enough evidence and said they couldn’t question him.
I thought that if I ever saw this guy again, I would kill him. He dropped out of high school four weeks before graduation (right after this happened) and I never saw him, until I was playing guitar at a pub in town and he showed up. He begged me to let him stay that day, since he wasn’t sober and “couldn’t go home” because of his family. I told him no, but another person there knew him from high school. They let hims tay in their dorm, but the next morning, they were missing a large amount of property. Joe took the playstation 2 and xbox in the front room, a big collection of cds, and the university computer in the commons area. He also took food out of the fridge and stole another roommates wallet.
This penny showed up one more time, last Christmas day. I was at my parents and heard someone walking around - it was about 4:30 am. I got in town at 3 after I got off work, so there was hardly any noise in the house. My parents were asleep, so I walked slow into the dining room. There was a rustling noise, and I assumed I’d heard a cat, but figured I should get a drink since I was right by the kitchen. I turned on the light and there he was. He’d busted the lock on the back door and came through the kitchen, but heard noise and freaked out. I held him down and hit him once, mostly just because of all the things that had happened. My father heard the noise, called the police, and started coming downstairs with a bat. He turned 18 and was tried on breaking and entering. I figure that one of these days he will turn up again, and it makes me very unhappy.
Brendon