Spitting Mad

And in other news, my faith in humanity has been once again shaken.

The last time I had something stolen from me was in 6th grade. I had set my stuff down just outside the classroom door to talk to the teacher about a report on Paul Revere he was concerned about. Apparently he was concerned that I was plagarizing because my written vocabulary was much more advanced than my oral one–”you don’t speak like this, so I’m sure you didn’t write it,” he said. I took my paper and left, fuming. How dare he accuse me of lying about my work?

When I came out, my lunch, nestled in its cute little lunchbox, was missing. Already stressed, I cried and cried and went hungry, and then I passed out later in the day because my metabolism hates me. The whole situation was based on my belief that people were decent enough to respect the fact that my property belongs to me, which some people would say is a flawed assuption that’s likely to get into trouble. (And they’d be right.) It shouldn’t have been traumatic as it was; after all, it was just a lunch and there are definitely worse things that have been stolen, but it still stings.

Losing my brand new phone on the bus put me right back in the same position as that helpless little 6th grader. I cried. I called the phone several times, as did Aaron. I called the King County Metro Lost and Found. I waited for four days before calling T-Mobile to cancel the account, because I was sure that someone would bring it to the bus driver…

And then I got our phone bill.

$212 and counting, because whomever found it not only decided to use it to call everyone this side of the U.S., no, they also downloaded a billion or so crappy ringtones. Eminem, 50 Cent, DMX…even Fergie! I could have forgiven them before–after all, it’s just a phone–but Fergie?  Never!

In all seriousness, though, it does hurt to be reminded that my property isn’t sacred. I grew very attached to that phone. I liked being able to call people. Aaaand my list of contacts, which can’t be recovered because T-Mobile is stupid (they only send the online account password TO THE PHONE, and the username is the phone number itself, GAH! talk about a security risk!!), is gone. Poof. There’s a list of at least fifty people that I don’t have the numbers for and have no way to recover, which is obviously very disrupting. And, just to include a bee sting, it’s going to cost about $60 to replace.

Granted, I realize that this rant is an entirely privileged one; a phone is a small thing to lose, and I wasn’t exactly mugged for it (thank goodness). It just bothers me that people, when given the choice to do the right thing, sometimes choose not to. And I liked being naive about that.