Honor among thieves

On days when I think I am turning into the Babcia, I remind myself that Little Brother was the first of the McPolack siblings to purchase a chest freezer so that even if my apple didn't fall far from the Polack thrift tree, at least it's got company.

Of course I highly doubt that Little Brother haunts Goodwill with the frequency I do, if at all.

Anyhoo. The Babcia loved the GW and so do I. I took a good 10-year break from the place because it became hip to shop there, which meant there was never anything good to buy. It's no longer that hip.

It is, however, a place where desperate people hang out, and one of them stole my wallet last weekend. This of course sucked. I had to go through quite the process to cancel my credit card. Then, when I went to the police station with Walnut, she filled out the witness section of my police report, and asked me if it was OK to put "whitish" under her ethnicity. I said she should put Ritz, because that's what color cracker she is. Whereas I am more Saltine. Then she lent me 100 dollars and drove me home. What a blessing it is to have Walnut living so close by.

I got a new ID card at the LNFU and began what turned out to be an epically shitty workweek. Before I could get around to ordering a new drivers license, a package from the "loose in the mail" division of the USPS appeared in my mailbox. Inside was my wallet, sans cash but avec everything else, including the $25 Starbucks card I got from the Easter Bunny.

I felt SO grateful to get that wallet back. Grateful and warm about the world. I don't really blame anyone but myself for getting my wallet stolen. I wasn't paying enough attention. It's not that I approve of stealing but that I understand it. Especially living where I do.

Interestingly, in a documentary about pickpockets in India I saw recently, the teenage boy they followed on his "workday" took all the rupees out of the wallet he'd grabbed, and then dropped the wallet with the rest of its contents intact into the mailbox. As India goes, so goes the world, I suppose.