My neighbor knocked on my door this morning. She asked me if I had a maroon Volkswagen. Then she informed me that the my car had been broken into. I usually keep an eye on what other vehicles are in the parking lot that I normally park in, and I know that there are only one or two other vehicles with a maroon color, and since she lives right upstairs and her dad helped me move some stuff in when I moved in here, I was pretty sure she wasn’t mistaken. Even with that, there was that part of me that was hoping she was wrong and that I’d get to my car and see that everything was ok.
I’ve never experienced a break-in or theft of anything in my life. So this was a little shocking. It’s actually amazing the level of insecurity about my personal space. If I could I would park my vehicle across the street from my bedroom or living room window, but for whatever reason, Maplewood has decided that parking on the street is a bad idea and will issue citations for cars parked in the street after 2am.
This whole thing is still a little bit surreal. My productive attitude for the day has completely gone away. I need to go get my car vacuumed out so that there isn’t any glass for me to sit and cut myself on. That truthfully would be the icing on the cake. The worst part of all this is that they didn’t hit a main parking lot. You have to seriously search around to find this one tucked away behind bungalow apartments and garages. It’s easily viewed from more than a few dozen windows.
The Maplewood Officer that showed up was friendly and took a good amount of information. He asked me if they took anything else besides the stereo. Luckily, whoever broke in was a complete moron and missed the GPS, my camera in my trunk, a variety of sunglasses, all of my quarters for parking, the really nice basketball, the authentic xfl football, and some other things that will no longer be stored in my car. I’m kind of glad they didn’t take the camera, otherwise I would have shot the below pictures with my crappy blackberry camera.
I guess the lesson that’s to be learned is that I’m glad my stereo wasn’t installed behind the dash, that would of created a much much bigger mess. But also, be sure to take the faceplate off the stereo and remove it from your car. Most stereos won’t play without the unique faceplate that came with it. I found a good one on craigslist though to replace it. $200 model for $50. I don’t think it has the sweet iPod plug-in capabilities that my other one had, but then again, I haven’t completely decided on buying this one or saving for something else.
–dez