Fuck theives

Darius was robbed.

Darius is my nine year old son. He's been saving up his allowance. He had almost $50 saved. He counted it last Saturday night when he got to my house. Every time we've gone anywhere for the last week, he's surreptitiously grabbed his wallet when he thought I wasn't looking, in hopes of finding a spiffy new toy on which to spend it. He didn't want me to see because he knows I'd urge him to save his money, and really, where's the fun in that?

So each time we went anywhere, he'd leave his wallet sitting in my car. Why he didn't put it in his back pocket like every other man on the planet, I don't know. I guess I hadn't taught him that yet. Also, it's hard to buy something at the store, when your wallet is still in the car. Luckily, I have a habit of religiously locking my doors--owing to an incident whereupon a Jacksonville Public Library DVD was stolen from my unlocked car. Those assholes tried to tell me I owed $70 to replace it. So now I can't check out books from the library. But I digress.

Thursday afternoon, on our way to Thanksgiving dinner at my girlfriend's house, we stopped at the Great Blue Monster to buy some dessert. Darius, as always, asked if he could look at the toys. Being the pushover that I am, I agreed and he found one he liked. Grabbing it, we headed to the checkout counter (which had surprisingly short lines for 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving). As I was paying for the desserts, Darius looked in his wallet to pay for his toy. It was empty.

Now, I know the feeling of expecting to see money where there is none. I know how his stomach dropped. I could see the chin pucker and the tears crowding at the eyelids, waiting to fall. Forty-six dollars, to a nine year old, is like, well, a lot. As we pieced it together, we discovered that the only time that the wallet has been out of his sight or on his person in the last week, it was either in my locked automobile, or on his dresser. I counted all the windows in my car and noticed nothing amiss.

Turns out, the day before, Darius brought a friend over to play. I was cooking dinner when in walked Darius with Andy, who's a year younger, and Andy's big brother Tony, who looks to be about 13. I thought it was weird that a 13 year old would want to hang out with his little brother and his friend, but I didn't think too much of it. They played for about an hour and then went home.

When Darius discovered his money missing, he remembered seeing Tony "messing" with his wallet, which was sitting on his dresser. So what's a dad supposed to do? If a teenager is seen "messing" with a wallet that contains money, and then the wallet contains no money, common sense suggests that said teenager took the money. In the absence of any other plausible explanation for the disappearance of the money, Occam's Razor says that Tony must have taken it. If it walks like a duck...

So I had Darius scour every inch of his room. I looked through my car. We made sure that the money is not here before I went to do what I knew I had to do. Darius, of course, was devastated. I tried to use his disappointment to teach an object lesson: take care of your shit. Also, don't trust teenagers. Just kidding.

Besides the DVD, I've had other stuff stolen from me. In high school, I had $60 taken from my backpack that was in my friend's room. That was at a time when sixty dollars was almost a week's salary at Taco Bell. Thievery was rampant when I was on the JFK. My Navy Peacoat , a nice inner-frame hiking backpack (come to think of it, the same one that had $60 taken out of it in H.S.), and a small granite pyramid I bought in Cairo: all stolen. Those three were probably the worst, since they were all stolen from my shop. It was a secure space, so the only people who could have stolen them were people I worked with and considered friends. The point is, I knew exactly how Darius was feeling.

If losing all that stuff did anything for me, it made me more honest. I loathe theives, and I'm rarely tempted to take something that doesn't belong to me. I tried to use this episode to instill the same thing in Darius. And to teach him to keep his wallet in his pocket.

Finally, I saw no way out of going to talk to Tony's parents. Since we didn't get back home from Raquel's folks' house until late, I had to wait until Friday to talk to them. When I went over there, they were at work, and I spoke to Tony's grandfather. Well, I spoke at him. And he spoke at me. I, in English, he in Vietnamese. We didn't get very far.

Luckily I saw Andy later and he told me his parents worked until pretty late. So this morning after breakfast, I went over there and spoke with his mom. She speaks English, though it's often hard to understand her with her thick accent. I explained the situation, as delicately as I could (I suppose there is still a chance that Tony didn't take the money). She said Tony was staying over at a neighbor's house, so she sent Andy to get him. While we waited on her front porch, we made awkward small talk. She asked which house I lived in, and I pointed out my place three houses down. I mentioned how much I like the neighborhood--how I like that there are so many kids for Darius to play with--and asked her how long they'd lived here (three years). She mentioned how much she likes it, mostly because (and I wish I were joking about this) there are so few black people in the neighborhood. Wow.

Finally, Tony walked over, groggy-eyed, having just woken up. I explained why I was there. I told him Darius saw him messing with the wallet and asked if he knew anything about it. He assured me that he didn't. He didn't even look inside, he said. Great. Now what.

If he did take the money, then he'd have no compunction lying about it. If he didn't take the money, then he's telling the truth. Either way, we're really no closer to getting the money back. I looked at his mom who said something to him in Vietnamese, and she seemed unlikely to help. I tried to put myself in her shoes. If someone came to me accusing Darius of stealing something from their kid, how would I react?

First, I'd find out it Darius actually did it. I would ask him. If he said yes, his punishment would be less harsh. We'd give back whatever was taken and figure out some sort of restitution. Maybe he would wash their car or something. If he said no, I'd tear his room apart and make sure that he was telling the truth. If I found out he stole, and then lied about it, the punishment would be so harsh that he would never dream of stealing again. I think giving away his three or four favorite toys (especially the ones he saved to buy himself) to the kid he stole from would be a good start.

But that's my kid. I can't dictate how someone else deals with their delinquent. But Tony will never come in my house again. Darius can still play with Andy, and Andy can come over. I hope Darius learns to take better care of his stuff. I hope Tony goes to jail--I'm sorry, that's not fair. I truly hope Tony didn't do it. If I find out he didn't, I will march over and apologize to the entire family. But honestly, I don't have any other explanation. If, somehow, I find out he did, I'll march back over and demand the money back, lest I press charges. I know, $46 hardly seems worth it, but fuck I hate thieves.

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I Can't Help...

Falling in love, it turns out, can happen quickly, or it can happen slowly. For me, it was both. I knew within just a few weeks of meeting Raquel that I was in love with her. Now, for the record, I maintain no bullshit Hollywood ideas of love. I don’t think that love is something that happens to you, nor does it happen outside of our ability to control it. When I say I fell in love with Raquel, I mean that I knew that I wanted to be with her forever (or until she turned out to be crazy). I could foresee the possibility of a day when my feelings toward her would change, but I couldn’t (and still can’t) imagine a scenario where I would want to let my feelings dictate my actions (unless she did turn out to be crazy, though I think we’re beyond that point now). But I’m just now realizing that, although I discovered what I believe to be the closest thing to love at first sight, I didn’t realize that you can fall in love with the same person again and again.

I just remembered a day she came to see me while I was living in Pensacola. For some reason, we bought a gigantic bottle of bubbles. It had one of those economy sized wands with four or five rings on it, for maximum bubble capacity in a single dip. We discovered, driving around that day, that 25 miles per hour is the perfect speed to drive to maximize bubble production while holding this wand out the window. We drove all over Pensacola—a trail of bubbles following my SUV all over town.

That afternoon we went to the beach—found our own little corner on the western end of the island—and stayed until the sun began to set. We had a package of sour fish candy, and Raquel would suck all the sugar off of them, and then feed me the sticky, naked gummies. I remember being annoyed by it, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment by bringing it up. I’ll always remember the way she looked in the black and red bikini I helped her pick out—radiant in the golden light of the evening. We soaked up the sun and the salty air and watched as the breeze carried our bubbles over the white sand.

And laughed.

My God, I’ve laughed more in the last 23 months than in the previous 23 years. I used to be truly afraid that I’d never meet someone who could hold my attention for longer than a few months. I truly believed that after a certain amount of time, all relationships just get routine and monotonous—that this is simply a fact of life, like gravity or the inanity of televised dance competitions. How wrong I was. No, Dancing with the Stars is simply a delight; and every day with Raquel is more interesting than the last. She made me remember how great it feels to laugh.

As I lay in bed remembering that day, it occurred to me that, although I was madly in love with her long before we blew bubbles on the beach, I was falling in love with her again on that day—and again as I remembered it tonight. The great thing about love is that it isn’t beyond our control. We can choose to experience it again and again, as often as we desire.