Des Voleurs, Degagez-Vous

To start with a painfully clichéd phrase, “Today is the first day of the rest of my life”—because yesterday my entire post-adolescent life was robbed. Literally. Some asshole broke into my apartment and stole my laptop, which contains all my writing (and I’m not just talking blog posts, but articles, freelance copywriting, college and post-grad papers, original poetry), all the curriculum I’ve developed as a teacher (lesson plans, projects, notes, research), tons of emails, and a host of other important documents and information. Namely, I’ve lost my entire body of work to date, the groundwork for future work, and things I can’t even begin to recall. All gone. Game over.

It all begins with the living room window, with which N and I have fought an oftentimes losing battle for the past year. It’s extremely difficult to shut firmly, and doing so requires a team of at least two to three people. Sometimes it pops open after it’s been firmly (or semi-firmly) shut. To my knowledge, it was shut when I left the apartment yesterday morning, but one never truly knows.

Then there’s the scaffolding that’s lining both sides of my apartment building, as the property manager is finally renovating the facades after a 20 year lapse. For the past two months, there has been a team workers entering and exiting my building complex, working directly beside my apartment, waking me up with horrible banging and drilling, dusting up the stairwell—a constant nuisance, not to mention something that’s made me slightly uneasy. Who likes having lots of strangers hanging around near their home for a prolonged period?

You can probably put two and two together at this point. I came home yesterday from a full workday followed by gym workout (still in my sweaty workout clothes) to find that the window that I’d thought had been shut and the curtains that had most certainly been fully closed were open above a pile of dust on the cushions and carpet. I immediately knew my laptop was gone before I even looked toward its usual spot on my desk. Sure enough, gone it was, and it was the only thing taken. There were several other small, valuable items the culprit could have pinched, but a shiny white iBook seemed to do the trick. Plus, the thief needed a getaway bag so he dumped all the contents of my deskside trash and took the plastic garbage bag. Gee, thanks.

After feverishly checking and rechecking that nothing else had been taken, I called N, who as luck wouldn’t have it is away on business in the States, and he tried to talk me down. Everything that occurred afterwards was surreal and almost comical. I went downstairs to tell my super, and to enlist his help in calling the police, as my robbery-addled brain wasn’t operating at normal capacity and my French was coming out painfully wrong . He, his wife, and their daughter were very sympathetic and sweet and helped me without hesitation. The teenage daughter dialed the cops and what ensued was a family sitcom scenario of her speaking on the phone, the mom continuously yelling at her to ask for their exact address and Metro stop, and the dad continuously yelling at the mom to stop yelling at their kid. This went on for several minutes and at one point I did let out a little giggle that I had to stifle with a cough. Ahem. We determined that I would walk to the police station and in the meantime the super and his wife would alert my downstairs neighbor, who was a victim of the same crime exactly a week before (unbelievable, right?). They told me Mme G could give me useful information on how to proceed. Cool.

My mind was then racing with the multitude of things I had to immediately do: get the damn window shut, go to the police station, of course shower because in France walking around in one’s sweaty gym clothes automatically lowers one’s credibility, and uh oh, my friends visiting from SF (who thank goodness were spending the night) were due chez moi in two hours so I’d have to leave a note on my door instructing them to wait at the café downstairs while I tended to the emergency. I decided to tackle the window first, unaided (big mistake) and was getting so worked up emotionally that I absentmindedly placed one hand on a pane of glass in the window while putting pressure on the frame in order to get it closed. The next thing I knew, my hand had gone straight through the glass, without even so much as a crashing sound effect. Pffff, pop! was all I got. (This is so like me. I am the most closeted clumsy person in the world. I appear to have it all together, but every now and again I have a really bizarre or just plain foolish mishap—usually none involve injuring myself, though.) Don’t worry, I was super, super lucky to only sustain some shallow cuts on my hand, but at the time I was bleeding and in shock and so I just lost it. Explosions. Nuclear meltdowns. Call in the haz-mat crew, a.k.a. my beloved N, who could barely make out what I was saying, I was in such hysterics. He was attempting to talk me down yet again, when suddenly the doorbell rang. And this is when Mme G, the downstairs neighbor whose laptops were stolen last week, entered the picture and the fires started to get put out.

I first put her on the phone with N, because my French was becoming more and more second-grader by the moment. They exchanged stories. Hers was even worse! The workers had broken one of her windows in the course of their work and offered to help patch it up with cardboard. Two of them actually went into her apartment to apply the temporary fix. About a few days later, she left her apartment for two hours, only to return to the cardboard slashed, the window open, two computers gone, and a trail of dusty footprints leading to her front door (which is so cartoonish it’s almost funny…well, really, it’s just horrible).

Anyhow, I eventually said goodbye to N. Mme G took one look at my haggard expression and knew she had to take charge of the situation. And she did so in the kindest, most gracious way. We agreed I should wait until the next morning to go to the police given the additional fracas with the glass and my hand, plus the simple logic that it could wait until tomorrow. She called my household insurance company; she called the police. Finally, she insisted that she accompany me to the police station the following morning and gave me her numbers in case I needed anything.

Then more neighbors started showing up to express their sympathies and concerns. (Wow, news spreads fast in this building.) One neighbor and the super helped me finally get the window very firmly shut. I patched up the hole in the glass with cardboard and packing tape. Once the excitement died down, I was able to take a long shower and reflect. Yes, this is a terrible loss of something priceless. Yes, whoever did this is a real MF and has left me feeling violated and unsafe in my own home. Yes, I am such an idiot for not backing up my data despite knowing better, yet being too lazy to deal (believe me, I will probably beat myself up over this one for a long time to come). But really, despite all the negativity generated from this incident, I have to look on the bright side, because I’m a stereotypical positive American, dammit, and that’s how we do. So: I’ve learned an important lesson (always back up! wasn’t this a Sex and the City episode?), and now I have a fresh start. Tabula rasa. I will have to keep telling myself that when the sadness and anger seesaw back into play.

To help put things into perspective, I decided to read the news. Hurricane Hanna, Iraq, and Sarah Palin…yeah, my problems are pretty small. I eventually received my wonderful friends, whose presence calmed me down immensely—to the point that they were marveling at how calm I seemed (you should’ve seen me a couple hours ago, friends)—and in no time I was laughing and having a fun evening. As an extra precaution, they also helped me move the sofa in front of the windows, in effect blocking the windows from being opened. I don't like having a hole in the glass with scaffolding adjacent to my apartment, but moving the sofa made me feel better and I don’t think the jerk who broke in would be so bold as to attempt it again. (I’ll get a real glass replacement on Monday, anyhow.)

I had a semi-sleepless night, in part because I kept hearing fishy noises on the scaffolding outside my bedroom window. Paranoia started to get the better of me. (It’s him/them, he’s/they’re back with a crew of thieves and they’re going to clean the place out. Must…protect…Rock Band gear and Goonies DVD! Haha, just kidding.) Finally I worked up the nerve to take a peek. Pfew! Just a tarp attached to the scaffolding twisting and rasping in the wind. Girl, you’ve seen way too many scary movies.

My neighbor accompanied me to the police station this morning and I filed the report. It was a fairly painless procedure—I didn't need 14 documents, the police were nice, I managed fairly well with my French, and my neighbor picked up the slack when I couldn't. Then the police sent over a "police technique" (forensics) person, who arrived with his smart-looking forensics briefcase. I was expecting a little CSI action—dusting for fingerprints or at least some inspection of the premises—but he only asked me the same questions they did at the station, wrote down the same information I’d reported at the station, and explained there was nothing more he could do. DUUUUUUUUUUUH. Um, why did you come in the first place? (Ah, France. Such a high unemployment rate and therefore some pretty pointless jobs.) He did share one bit of interesting info: He said the police gets tons of these reports any time there's travaux (renovations) done on a building. In a way that makes me feel better, but in a way it’s even more infuriating.

Mme G and I returned to our building only to learn from the super that there had been a third incident, this time in the building across from mine. The workers have been painting and so an elderly resident left the windows open to air out the apartment, only to return home to find one of the workers standing in the apartment. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! The resident is scared to report it to the cops in case the worker threatens or hurts him. Three incidents in one week? That’s it, these guys have to be fired. My downstairs neighbor, my landlord, and my super are all pressuring the building manager to crack some heads at the contractor’s. As the French would say, c’est insupportable.

Later, I went to the gym to channel my aggression and focus on something else. Pumping iron really works! I felt good and strong and sweaty and alive. Some comforting phone calls with family members, delicious white tea, and a hot shower later, I’ve managed to put a lot of the negativity behind me and I’m awaiting yet another set of visiting friends. (I’m quite grateful to not be spending the weekend alone in my apartment given the circumstances.) Moreover, I’ve returned to one of the most relaxing exercises I know: writing. I am rebuilding the temple, so to speak. So thank you for sticking it through this super long account; it’s been an important cathartic step.