I Hope He Breaks a Tooth on a Piece of Candy

Someone rang our doorbell this morning around 9. Ryan answered the door and I recognized my neighbor Jeff's voice but I could only hear Ryan's end of the conversation.

"What? No. We didn't know. Hmfph. Thank you."

Then I saw him leaning out the door. At that point I jumped up and said, "Did someone break into our car?"

"Yes."

I was furious! The timing is just impeccable. For Lent this year I am giving up anger. Trying to give it up. Feeling angry is fine - it's just the expression of the anger that I'm really trying to work on. If there was a test for this sort of stuff I think I would have failed based on my vocabulary choices alone.

We thought at first we knew who it was since we caught someone skulking along the curb a couple of months ago peering into cars before he walked off camera and smashed our neighbor's Jeff and Ron's house sitter's car window. I sent the video out to the neighborhood listserv and people said it was Albert. Our resident car prowler.

Having an idea of who it was Ryan said he wanted to go to his house and smash all of his windows. Of course, I piped up and said, "Is that what Jesus would do?" We had a little back and forth and came to the conclusion that even if Jesus wouldn't turn the other cheek and smashed out Albert's windows he would at least get caught and be the one to get in trouble.

So as I'm swearing at the punk in the video and Ryan turned to me and said, "And you think I was being unchristian like?"

Enough said.

Then I thought about watching the Oprah show where she interviewed Jim Jones, Jr. - son of Jim Jones of the Jonestown massacre. If he could forgive his father for killing his wife, sister, a brother, and unborn child then surely I could refrain from swearing at the punk who broke a window on my van.

Since we had the smash and grab on video the police came out to the house to take our report and to look at the video. Ryan answered the door a few minutes later to let the officer in and ran downstairs to get the video for the officer to watch. I told the officer he could come into the living room since he was just standing behind the baby gate in the entry way. Gavin marched straight over to the officer and put his hands in the air and said, "Up."

The officer didn't understand what he was asking so he tried to make small talk with him but Gavin kept saying, "Up." I told the officer that Gavin wanted to be picked up. So the officer bent over and picked him up.

The officer gave Gavin a sticker badge. Gavin said thank you (with some prompting) then asked to go up again.

Since we had the video the officer dusted the inside of the van for prints and encouraged us to call when we see suspicious people walking around. I will call but if I had seen the punk at 5 am this morning I would have seen him breaking into our van. If I had seen that I would have screamed at him from the front door. I probably would have screamed some unkind words.

The only thing that would have kept me from running and ramming his body into the van (he was half way in) would be the guy who caught someone in the act of breaking into his car who was stabbed and left with life threatening injuries up in North Seattle a couple of days ago and Maurice Clemmons (the guy who killed the four Lakewood officers a couple of months ago) stole a car in the south end of my neighborhood - the owner of that car saw Clemmons stealing his car but he called the police instead of confronting the monster. Good call.

That and I'm a wee little weakling.

Ryan and I watched the video to see if he made off with anything since we didn't remember leaving anything in the van. There were a few receipts, a Jack Johnson CD case, and a coupon to Cedars on Brooklyn in the U-District sitting on the drop down console. Under the console and out of sight was a plastic white Target bag with candy conversation hearts.

The little punk broke into our van when NOTHING was in sight. We had no change in the glove box, No tell tale chargers to indicate we had electronics stashed away. NOTHING. The little cretin broke the window in the hopes he would find something. It's a freakin' minivan?! What was he hoping to score? Hotwheels?

He did find something. On the video we saw him walk away from the van rifling through a white plastic bag.

After I took the carseats out of the van and put them in the car and had the boys strapped in ready for church I stood next to the car and said to Ryan before hopping in and driving away, "I hope he breaks a tooth on a piece of candy."