*miserychick is actually happy

Amongst other little things that the petty thief took from last week’s B&E episode (that’s cop speak for ‘breaking and entering’), we just noticed now that we’re missing a little bag whose absence is really quite devastating.  Much more traumatic than having someone breaking into your house while you’re sleeping, it’s knowing that this bag is gone.

It’s almost unbelievable that anyone would take it.  The little bag is a pink see-through mesh bag with a bunch of pieces of strings and DV tapes.  Out of all the valuables and electronic gadgets we leave around our living room, our robber, who decided to take the change bowl from the mantel, the digital camera and some cash our of our wallets but not the wallets, not the laptop computers, not the two Nintendo DS, not the Wii, not the Apple TV… but this bag, which would be of no monetary value to any one… he somehow decided to grab this bag.

In the bag:  all the strings we were given as blessings (tied around our wrists) during the Thai ceremony of our wedding, and several DV tapes, including the two tapes from our wedding that we haven’t watched, all the old videos from our first and second year at ITP, our trip to Japan, Mark’s first trip to Thailand, every trip we’ve ever taken in Europe:  Venice, Treviso, Rome, Amsterdam, Milan, Vienna, Switzerland, etc. etc. etc. I can’t even remember where else, but that’s why you keep the damn tapes.  They were all the tapes we’d used to compile a slideshow for the wedding reception.  We put them in one bag then added our tapes from the wedding day and the strings for keepsake.  Every once in a while we would mention, hey, maybe we should capture those video from the wedding some time… but we never got around to it.

And now they’re gone.  Poof.  All our memory.  Poof.  Things we can’t and don’t bother to remember.  Poof.  Things we figured we’d get around to watching one day when we’re bored.  Poof.

Why would any thief ever want to take it?  Why?  What benefit would my wedding video ever be to anyone?  Why would you leave a bunch of expensive gadgets lying around the house but take this bag that has no use to you at all??

At first, I thought we’d misplaced the bag.  Maybe we’d moved it and forgot where we moved it to.  But truth is, ever since we got back from Thailand, we left the bag there on the bookshelf and haven’t bothered to move it, open it, or even go through the tapes.  It’s only today that I decided to dig the old DV camera out of the storage in order to go through the tapes to look for some footage to contribute to the ITP reunion video.  I look over to where it’s supposed to be and the bag isn’t there.  We flipped the house over looking for it, and it’s not here.  Just not here.  He took it.  Just like the camera, the change bowl, the tokens…  he took my freaking tapes.

Why?  Why?  Why?  Why?

It didn’t bother me too much that he damaged my bike, took our camera, and whatever little cash he got away with.  They’re just stuff, fixable and replaceable.  But now…

Now… for the rest of my life, I’d be wishing that we would have watched our wedding video sooner.  Or woke up sooner, or put the tape somewhere else… or .. or… or.

Posted on Monday, 21 September 2009 at 22:27 UTC