Remember in my last blog I mentioned that I didn’t know what I was going to write about? How I just rambled about walking around the neighborhood looking for ideas.

Well, God has other ways of providing interesting things for me to write about:

I had a visit from the police this morning.

I had no plans to go out today, but my wife convinced me to get the laundry done. Which, for us, means taking a full load down to the car and driving several blocks away to a laundromat. Yes, we have a washer and dryer in our apartment building but they are small and usually being used by others, when they are not broken.

So today, I carry the load to the car and shove it into the trunk and go around to the driver’s door. As I get into the car, I see the glove compartment is open and papers are scattered all over. Okay, maybe the glove compartment had fallen open on its own, but then I see items sitting on the passenger seat that I know were in the driver’s door cup holder.

I went back up to the apartment to get my wife so she could confirm what I was seeing. At which point we saw that one of the back doors was partially open.

At which point we called the police to report a robbery

There were a couple of more important emergencies across town today, so I hold nothing against the police or this officers for taking nearly an hour to get to us.

While waiting we went through what might possibly have happened and it became very clear. My wife has physical therapy twice a week in the mornings, and yesterday we put her athletic bag in the back seat when she was done. Getting back to the apartment– we were blessed to get the space right out front so we didn’t have to walk far—she grabbed the bag. As I got out of the car, I was ready to locks the doors, but she hadn’t yet grabbed the bag, so I held back locking it and then followed her.

Well, that was about 9:30am yesterday morning, I wouldn’t bring the laundry down until about 8:30am this morning. Meaning that the car probably sat there unlocked for twenty-three hours.

Which means, I’ll admit, I probably didn’t lock the car. So, it was my mistake all around.

We were not going to get into the car again and look to see if anything had been stolen until there was a police officer on site to witness it and give us any recommendations as we did.

So, the officer arrived and was very friendly. He did question us if we were the ones that called in, because our car is parted on the side of the building not on the address side. But that’s totally logical, there might have been someone else he needed to get to.

As I said, he was very kind. He went around the car and didn’t see any signs of forced entry. There were none. With the officer watching I went through everything that had been tossed around and put it all back in the glove compartment.

(Does anyone actually put gloves in the compartment now-a-days?)

We don’t store things in our car, except for coupons for fast food joints. So, there was nothing missing. The radio had not been pried from the dashboard… that happened to my sister years ago… do people steal car radios today?

There was even a nice flashlight in the arm rest and whoever was there didn’t even think of taking it. Probably the most valuable thing in the car.

In the end we chose not to make a police report because there wasn’t anything stolen and I was certain by now that I had left the car unlocked for a full day.

We thank God that there was no damage made to the car… and the one concern that all car owners have now is that the catalytic converter stolen. The officer said that if it happened the sound of the engine would be very loud like some old sports car. So, I started it up and it ran fine. Again, no problem.

So, the only thing that really came out of this anxiety rising event, was more content for the blog. If it had been anything more than that, I might be asking you to donate to my Ko-fi account up there on the right to pay for car repairs and not a new streaming PC.

The lesson for the evening is, LOCK YOUR DOORS.