She Came in Through the Bathroom Window...

Yes, it was a she and she really did what the song says. My house was burglarized last week by two teenaged girls. The local police have them in custody now and they are singing up a storm. While I was at work, in broad daylight, one of them kept watch on my front porch while the other one removed a screen, opened a window and propelled herself inside through an opening 18" by 19." Nothing that an average-sized man could accomplish.

Once inside she rummaged through my bedroom drawers looking for jewelry. Perhaps this was after she was in the living room and saw my old-fashioned box television that requires a signal decoder to operate and my 2002 Dell computer tower. At that point she probably wished she'd spent her time hauling her ass elsewhere, but to make the best of a bad situation she rummaged through the bedrooms.

I could tell she knew her jewelry because she left most of my low-budget silver rings and earrings (except for a few she must have fancied) and went straight for the gold. Unfortunately for me, the only gold jewelry I have was my mother's. I kept it separately in what I thought was a good hiding place but, obviously I was mistaken.

My mother had a different philosophy on purchasing things than I do. She believed it was more meaningful to have a few very nice items than a whole pile of inexpensive, colorful ones. Our jewelry reflects very different theories of acquisition.

So my robber girls went off with the good stuff. The cops in my home city have been fabulous throughout this entire ordeal. They dusted for prints, kept me informed of everything and one of them even went out to the bushes near a park at 1 AM to retrieve some of my belongings.

As a young person I hated cops. They represented the enemy. In high school, I was a druggie and a shoplifter, ( I never would have broken into a house), so I avoided encounters with them. In college I was a political activist so I fought them, and later, as an out lesbian, who was perceived as an outlaw by the powers that be, the animosity continued.

But, of late, since the series of pension attacks on public sector workers, I have found myself regarding them more like brothers and sisters who hold very difficult, life threatening jobs. In the Wisconsin uprisings cops and firefighters were on the front lines, even though Scott Walker tried to separate them and their issues off; a blatant divide and conquer strategy.

One officer told me that the girl who was in my house lives with her grandmother a few streets away. This extra information serves to make me less afraid when I am at home alone. Perhaps, it also makes me a bit more understanding. Is it karma, are my chickens finally coming home to roost? If so, I hope my debt is now cleared and they can lay the rest of their eggs elsewhere.