Robbed, Repeatedly

                   I wrote this almost three years ago, and posted it on my Facebook page.  Every now and then, someone will ask, "Whatever happened with...?" If you already know this story, skip to the end to find out how it all turned out.

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                   It started with my son's bike.

                   A little over a year and a half ago, my son's Scout troop started working on their bicycling badge. Boys have to earn a badge in hiking, swimming or cycling to earn their Eagle Scout award, so the troop planned for the boys to earn their cycling badges together. The badge includes doing several long distance rides, culminating in a 50 mile ride. There was no way his old bike, designed for tooling around the neighborhood, would handle extended rides on gravel roads, the way his troop had planned, so we went shopping for a mountain bike.

                   It was time for a new bike anyway – he was now a teen, still using the bike we'd bought for a younger child. We spent days going from store to store, specialty bike shops to WalMart. We finally chose a 24 inch mountain bike; at 13, Alex wasn't done growing. It wasn't top of the line, but it was far from the bottom. It handled the bike trail along the river, the dirt roads in the mountains, and the pavement in town, just like it needed to.

                   About a month ago, I was doing yard work when Alex said, "Mom, where did you put my bike?" All of our bikes were kept in the back yard – the garage is too crowded and the shed is too small. I uttered the same things countless parents before me have: "I didn't put it anywhere; I don't ride it."

                  Undeterred, Alex said, "Well, you must have put it somewhere. It's not where it's supposed to be."

                   Feeling slightly harassed, and wanting to finish my yard work, I said, "It's got to be wherever you put it. Nobody else uses it." It's possible that, when I'm preoccupied or stressed, I become a walking cliché' factory.

                   Alex was feeling slightly harassed, himself. "Didn't you move it yesterday when you were digging up those plants?" His bike, along with his sister's brand new bike, had been in our floorless gazebo, to keep them out of the recent rain. The day before, I'd been moving things out of the gazebo so I could dig up, and give away via Freecycle, the seedling grapevines that had sprouted in its center. I tried to remember – had his bike been there?

                    I looked over at the gazebo, as if it could tell me, and noticed Hallie's bike in the same place I expected it. I also saw something that gave me the first inkling that something might be wrong. Alex's helmet, which always hangs from his handlebars, was lying on the ground where I expected his bike to be. He wouldn't have used the bike and left the helmet there.

                    We searched the yard; no bike. We phoned his friends, his grandmother, his youth group leader; no bike. We called the man who'd given him a ride home from the church father/son campout. They'd ridden bikes home, about 40 miles down the mountain, from the overnight trip, so I knew he'd had the bike then. No bike. He hadn't left his bike anywhere he'd been recently. It soon became clear to us that the bike had been stolen.

                    We were furious. Who wouldn't be? The idea that someone had come into my back yard and stolen from my child was infuriating.

                    Most of our friends said, "It's going to Burning Man. It's already been stripped and painted fuchsia in someone's garage." The attendees of the annual festival would start streaming through town within weeks, and I learned that bikes are a prized Burning Man commodity (and also that many are abandoned afterward.) I supposed that was marginally better than having a crackhead pawn it for $20 to get their next fix.

                    I wondered if it was a boy who wanted a bike. If someone had asked, we might have given them the bike. It was still in great shape, but Alex had grown more than half a foot since we bought it, and was probably due for a new one again. A girlfriend's husband had just given away his old mountain bike. I see bikes frequently on Freecycle. Why don't people just ask, I wondered. If I knew a kid who really wanted a bike, or an adult who needed one to get to work, I'd do everything I could to get them one.

                    The most likely scenario, my husband decided, was that a ball had come over our back fence from the park, as they frequently do, and that the owner had jumped the fence to retrieve it. Whoever it was saw the bike, liked it, tossed it over the fence into the park and jumped over after it, disappearing in less than a minute. That sounded extremely plausible, but we resigned ourselves to the idea that we'd never know.

                   We bought a new bike, and keep it in the living room, next to Hallie's bike. Nothing in my back yard is secure enough to chain it to.

                   A week or so later, we left the state to go visit our oldest daughter at college. She's staying there for the summer, and missing her family. We haven't visited since we dropped her off three years ago, and never saw her last apartment. It was time to go see her, meet her roommates, and help her feel important.

                   Whenever we go out of town, my mother picks up the mail and waters the plants, Alex's best friend feeds the pets, and our second born daughter checks in now and then to use the computer, raid the fridge and make sure things are OK. We feel very secure having three separate people watching our house, and my mom is only 2 ½ blocks away in case of an emergency.

                   Terry, our daughter, spent several hours on Sunday at the house. Everything was fine. Jeff, our pet sitter, and his mom left at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday night. Everything was fine. We arrived home at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night.

                    As tends to be the case when arriving home after a long drive, there was a race for the bathroom. I headed to the bathroom off the master bedroom, and Alex headed for the bathroom by the children's rooms. I went into the bathroom without turning on the light in my room. The bathroom door is only about two steps to the left of the bedroom entrance.

                     I sat down on the toilet, and immediately felt fear. It seemed so odd, so completely out of context that I actually reached up to my neck to feel my pulse, to see if I was somehow wrong in thinking that I was afraid. Sure enough, my pulse was pounding. I wondered what in the world was wrong; usually, coming home is an immense relief – we're safe, I get to sleep in my own bed – but this time the fear seemed to emanate from the room somehow. I listened hard, then looked around to see if I could see anything.

                    The first thing I noticed was the medicine cabinet, with all three doors standing wide open. Then, I noticed that the cabinet under the sink was wide open. There were a few other things out of place, but the gaping doors were like an alarm – something's wrong, something's wrong. There was no reason for Jeff or Terry to be in my bathroom, and my mother, at 80, avoids the stairs. Even if anyone had needed, say, an aspirin, the room wouldn't look this way.

                    I finished my business and just stared for a moment, then walked back into my room and turned on the light. Holy cow.

                   The room was ransacked, with great thoroughness and little finesse. The bedding had been swept off onto the floor, and the bed was covered with the contents of every box, bowl and catchall in the room. All the drawers had been dumped onto the floor, and linens and clothes from the closet were strewn across the room. I couldn't even walk to the bed; the steps to the bathroom were the only clear places on the floor. The shelves that hold my knickknacks – my ceramic carousel horses, travel keepsakes, wedding album – had also been emptied onto the floor.

                   I mentally ran through my walk through the house and up the stairs; everything had seemed fine, but I hadn't been looking too closely. I heard my son go into his room down the hall, and I hurried down the hall and poked my head in. "Everything OK here?" I asked, in what was almost a normal tone. Alex assumed I was asking about the other residents of his room, the tortoise, snake and bearded dragon, and said, "Yeah, everybody's OK," as he picked up Flame, the snake. Honestly, I was relieved to see Flame. Somehow, I thought that burglars would want a snake.

                  "OK, just checking!" I headed back down the stairs. The hallway and kitchen looked just like I'd left them a week earlier, except for the pile of mail. Back through the living room to the front door everything looked fine, but I headed away from the front door, through the living room toward the back of the house and the family room. There it was – an open window with a slit screen. A once-over revealed that one of our computer monitors was gone, but I didn't see much else amiss, except for the fact that a landscaping timber was sitting in the middle of my couch. I didn't even want to contemplate why that was.

                   My husband was still schlepping luggage in from the car, a rental. I said something vague like, "I'll need you as soon as this is done." He caught the edge in my voice that Alex hadn't. "Is everything OK?"

                   Well. I could have blown him off, but why? I said something like, "I'm not sure, but it'll wait." It would not wait. He was immediately alert.

                   Dan's first reaction was anger, of course. "Not much seems to be missing," I told him, but he looked specifically for items of value, and in seconds knew that the Wii and all the controllers and games were gone. "They got the DVD player!" he called from in front of the TV cabinet. At the same moment, I noticed the empty shelf in the living room, the shelf that should be covered in Alex's knife and sword collection. My heart sank.

                   He started collecting them about three years ago, and usually received additions to his collection on Christmas and birthdays. As a Scout, he'd carried pocket knives and Swiss Army knives from a young age, but he'd more recently been collecting larger, more ornate knives, designed for show.

                   The first showy knife was a Christmas gift. My kids get one gift from Santa every year, delivered by the Big Guy personally at our extended family party. We have a photo of the moment Alex opened the cherry stained box with the bears-in-a-stream scene on the lid and discovered the knife, a fairly large number with a handle having an intricate carving of bears that matched the art on the box. He's beaming ear to ear. He spent the rest of the party reverently opening the lid to show the adults who said, "Let me see that." The fact that his adult cousins, including the two who are his shooting coaches, liked the knife gave it even more cachet. The next year, he received a large knife with a handle shaped like an eagle and a wooden stand to display it. He informed me, with a twinkle in his eye as he brandished the six inch blade, "I think Santa has lost his mind."

                      Last year, he received a set of three matched swords for Christmas. He's been fencing for years now, which has made him more curious and better informed about swords. He loves dragons, so the sheaths have emblazoned dragons on them.

                      As his collection grew, he decided to display them all in the living room. I wondered why he didn't want shelves in his room, or just outside in the hallway, and he quickly cleared that up – "I want everyone to be able to see them." Now they were gone, all of them. We found the two longest swords lying on the floor under the window. Apparently, the smallest was small enough to shove down the back of a thief's pants, but the others were too large and would have drawn undue attention, should someone race through the neighborhood or through the park waving them. Not many people wielding samurai swords in suburbia.

                     We had to return the rental car, but I didn't want my kids alone in the house. I called Terry to come over and stay with them; she burst into tears when I told her that the thieves had come in through the window. After returning the car, we went to the police station and were given paperwork to fill out and told to go home and wait for an officer. ("Why did you come here instead of phoning?" the desk clerk wanted to know. It's not as if I deal with crime daily; if there's protocol for non emergency police reports, I don't know it, and I didn't think this merited 911.) We were not to clean up, she said; they'd want photos.

                     As we scoured the house, the losses became clearer. The cash we'd set aside for a kitchen remodel was gone. The Game Cube games were gone. It's not as if we wouldn't be eating for a week, or the house was burned down or anyone harmed, but if you've ever been robbed, you know that isn't the whole picture. It's frightening, infuriating, disheartening. You don't know if you're safe, or if they'll be back, or why they chose you; you don't know the answer to a hundred different questions.

                      Dan was the one who noticed that my keys were gone. Normally, they hang on a rack labeled, "keys." Since we were driving a rental and my husband and son both had house keys, I'd left my cumbersome wad at home. Losing the keychains was bad enough. One was an eighteen year old keepsake, a memento of a play I'd worked on; one was a fifteen year old gift from my niece, brought back from London. Having the keys to my home and my cars in the hands of burglars was intolerable. We had a new deadbolt in the door within an hour. The police finally came after four hours.

                      The officer was nice, but seemed fairly bored. He also seemed fairly skeptical, as though we were making the whole thing up. He'd say things like, "So you think they came in this way?" The only two answers that come to mind are, "Looks like it," and, "No, chances are they came in some other way and opened this window and slit the screen as a decorating statement." Maybe I'm just touchy, but after 11 hours in the car, a robbery and waiting in a mess until one thirty in the morning, touchy is understandable.

                     People are sometimes puzzled by my reaction to a crisis, as well. I become extremely calm, extremely efficient and very articulate. It throws people who expect sniveling hysteria. I might be too sensitive, but it seemed that the officer wondered why I wasn't crying or swearing.

                     "Do you have any idea who it might have been?" he wanted to know.

                     "From what they took and what they left, I'm guessing teenage kids," I said.

                     "Oh, ma'am, never assume that," was the reply. He's probably right – what do I know about burglars? I thought.

                     He took meticulous notes, needing an approximate dollar value for everything we lost. He took photos, but no fingerprints. Then he calmly informed us, "You know, this case will go inactive almost immediately. It's unlikely you'll ever get any of this back."

                     "Yes, but if you find a robbery suspect, and they have some of our stuff, you can prosecute them for both, right?" The answer was vague, but seemed to translate to, "Don't hold your breath."

                     You know, I understand that law enforcement is understaffed, overwhelmed and strapped for cash. I get it that my low dollar property crime is not a #1 priority. I know that there are violent, dreadful happenings in my community. I know, too, that I will not always meet people when they're at their best. But come on, is sympathy too much to ask? A little outrage? "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Zenz"?

                      I left most of the mess for the next day. I was so exhausted that I didn't have much energy left. Cleaning up was almost worse than the mess.

                      In all the children's rooms, the dressers had been rifled and the mattresses rolled off the bed. Does anyone actually hide valuables under their bed? The only thing you'll find under mine is some stray tissues. In my sock drawer, oddly enough, I have socks. From the fury displayed in our room, the thieves were thinking, "Where are the valuables? Is this it?" Yes, that's it. My jewelry is costume. My drawers contain clothes.

                       Picking up the things they left on the floor, the things they'd discarded as being of no value, was painful. The outfits my kids wore home from the hospital as newborns, my son's Little League jersey, the handpainted T-shirt from camp, all were dropped on the floor and stepped on. These are my valuables. My blown glass rose under a dome, my memento from working on the play "Beauty and the Beast," broke when it hit the floor.

                      They were apparently disappointed that the pile of magazines in our room contained "PEOPLE" and "Family Handyman" but no porn. They seemed equally disappointed that my medicine cabinet contained only items like Benadryl and ibuprofen. We don't even have any cough syrup or liquid NyQuil.

                      I spent time wondering about who the intruders were. Were they kids, taking things that they personally wanted, or adults, ready to pawn it all to feed a drug habit? We were warned to expect them back in 4 to 6 weeks, about the time they'd figure that we'd replaced everything. I felt so sorry for my son; so much of what was gone was directly or indirectly his. To his credit, he made no "Why me?" comments, and the only semi-malicious wish he had was, "I'd like to see them try to rob a 7-11 with that sword. It's dull."

                     Countless people said to me, "It has to be someone who knew that you were gone." No, it doesn't; most property crimes are crimes of opportunity, and one of the tried and true methods of picking a house to rob is simply ringing the doorbell to see if anyone answers.

                      Many people went farther and said, "Who did you tell that you'd be gone? You didn't tell your neighbors, did you?" Why does this simple statement not enrage people? I remember when, "Tell your neighbors when you'll be gone, so they'll be alert to anything suspicious happening at your house" was a standard bit of law enforcement advice. It wasn't that long ago! How, in the space of a single generation, or less, have we gone from assuming that our neighbors will watch out for us to assuming that our neighbors will victimize us? How is this mindset OK? Why are we not all outraged by the implications?

                     I didn't say that, though. Over and over, I said, "No, we didn't tell our neighbors. They can probably tell anyway, but I'm sure this was no one that we know." To everyone from the police department to my mother, we said the same thing. "No, it wasn't anyone we know. Maybe a friend of a friend, but nobody we know."

                    Last Sunday, I went out to my car to drive myself and my kids to church. (Dan was at work.) There wasn't even a stutter when I turned my key, so I assumed a dead battery and hopped in the other car. That night I told my husband, "You'll need to jumpstart Stevie for me." (Yes, we named the car. All our cars have names.) "His battery was dead this morning."

                    When Dan went out to jumpstart the car, the battery was gone. Gone. Stolen, right out of my car. Checking the hoods of the other cars (Earl, Henry and Blue, if you must know,) he discovered that all the hoods had been popped. They'd been "shopping," and had taken the battery not at random, but because it was the size they needed.

                     I tried to imagine the scenario – your car dies, so you leave it and go looking under every car in walking distance? You don't need it for a car, but you're powering a terrorist device? How far do you want to carry a car battery, anyway?

                      So, we bought a new battery and tried to decide if we wanted to fill out another useless police report. I didn't want to hear, "You realize you won't be getting that back," again.

                      This week, my oldest daughter came to visit. It's the last time Lana will be home before she graduates from college, so we planned fun things. On her wish list was going to Tahoe, so we took the two days Terry had off and went camping at Tahoe. We returned about 4:00 in the afternoon, and as we made the turn onto our street, our next door neighbor, M, came out of his house beckoning. We saw him just a few seconds before one of the kids said, "Dad, where's your car?"

                      In front of our house was a blank space in between Terry's car and mine. Blue, Dan's car, was gone.

                     While Lana has been fairly consumed by the idea that someone had keys to the cars, I've been saying, "Let them take the cars." Our newest car (coincidentally, Blue) is eleven years old. It's not as if they're priceless, heirloom collectibles. Plus, if someone's pulled over driving my car, that's proof that they took it, especially if they're driving with my keys. We may not get a burglary conviction, but by golly, I can get grand theft auto if you take my car. I'll take grand theft auto. I'll take any chance to nail a thief. As a bonus, if they have my keys, that's a pretty clear indicator that they robbed my house, and should be good for a search warrant on their house(s). Ironically, justice is most likely to be served if they robbed me again.

                     Let's call that "Mistaken Assumption #2." "Mistaken Assumption #1" had apparently been, "It's no one that we know." M had seen what had happened, and named, for us and for the police, two teenage boys from our neighborhood. From his front door, you can see both of their homes. Both these boys are in the same grade as my son, and were his close friends when they were younger.

                    I phoned the police department, and they confirmed that M had filed a report the day before. "You have the make, model and plate number in the original report from the burglary," I told the woman on the phone. "Is someone out looking for my car?"

                   "Well, no," she said, sounding surprised that I'd asked. "It's not considered stolen until you come down here and sign a release."

                    A release? "My neighbor filed this report yesterday, but you're not considering the car stolen yet?"

                    "Well, no. We can't take his word for something of yours. It will be considered stolen after you fill out the paperwork and sign it. I can send an officer over."

                     I now know how long that can take. "My daughter's here from out of town, and we have 6:00 reservations. Is there any way you can give me a ballpark time frame on when someone will be here?"

                    "No. That all depends on what other calls come in. You can come down here instead."

                    So now I can come to the station. "We'll do that."

                    "OK! We're open til 9:00."

                    It turns out that, in this deeply litigious society, even police work is governed by fear of lawsuits. They can't look for my car until I sign the paperwork in case my neighbor is mistaken about my car being stolen, and I have in fact loaned it to someone or driven it away myself. They don't immediately begin looking in case it's a waste of time, and to prevent pulling over someone who's authorized to use the vehicle and will now sue the department for emotional damages, harassment, or whatever other rot they can convince a bottom feeding litigator to file for them. The fact that in this case, it was on file that my keys were missing, the suspects are 14 and unable to drive legally, and snuck into the car in the dark, still doesn't tip the scale toward theft.

                    So if we'd been out of the country for a month, we'd be totally screwed.

                    And for good measure, the responding officer asked M, "Are you sure it wasn't your own kids?" So, my neighbor does the right thing by seeing a crime and reporting it; but, it doesn't help us any, and he gets to feel harassed. All the public service announcements in the world about how people need to be involved and step up to help others isn't going to convince people to deal with this level of hassle. It just seems to me that the appropriate response would have been, "Thank you sir. Your neighbors are lucky to have you." Are manners passe'?

                     I realize that the police department has to deal with loons all the time, people who decide to call in a report that their neighbor is a meth dealer not because any meth deals are going on, but because someone's dog pooped on the wrong lawn. I can't blame the police for the crackpots. I try not to blame them for being jaded and assuming that everyone's a liar; in return, shouldn't law enforcement save a teeny bit of room in their minds for the idea that some crimes will actually be reported accurately?

                    Years ago, before identity theft was a common occurrence, someone used my info for various purposes, including credit cards in my name. I will never forget watching the officer with whom I filed a report react to the news that I knew the person (and she'd taken my license out of my wallet). "What did she say about why she wanted the credit cards?" he asked. I'm pretty darned sure that he NEVER looked a mugging victim in the eye and said, "What did he say about why he wanted your wallet?" Again, I'm clear on the fact that it's the people who file false reports and who use the police department to settle their personal grievances that causes this distrust, but again, I expect the PD to behave as if not everyone outside their department is scum.

                     This annoys me so deeply because I have always seen the cops as the good guys. Always. I was the kid who reached out and whacked the arms of any of my buddies who said, "I smell bacon!" as officers passed. I do not become uneasy and check my speedometer when I see a patrol car. The majority of my favorite TV shows are cop shows.

                     I also hate the second guessing people tend to do after a crime has been uncovered. People are human; they will make honest mistakes. One of the most common is the most understandable, the assumption we all have that the simplest explanation is the truth. This is a commonly held belief because often, it's true. Sometimes it's not. Remember when the man in Austria was arrested for keeping his daughter in a dungeon under their house? I talked to a friend who said, "His wife had to know! She said she heard odd noises. She said food would disappear from their kitchen." Now, assume that food is missing from your kitchen. Do you think, #1, someone ate it without permission, or #2, my husband must have a secret dungeon under the house? Exactly. If you hear an odd noise, do you think, #1, we have a rodent problem, or #2, there's sex slaves underground?

                     With kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard, it's heartbreaking to think that an officer was called to the house where she was held three years ago but never set foot in the house or backyard, and yes, the officer seems to have been negligent. But, we can't ignore the fact that he could have searched the house and what appeared to be all of the yard and seen nothing amiss. If someone told you that your neighbor was a sex fiend with children living in tents in his backyard, especially if the neighbor seemed generally unhinged anyway, would you immediately think, "I'll bet he's had captives for almost two decades"? Cops are human.

                     So here I am, firm believer in good cops and forgiving the flaws of human nature, and I still feel that justice is not being served. It's so disheartening.

                     Dan went down and signed the paper so our car could be classified stolen, and was told, guess what? Go home and wait for an officer. They have to come to the scene and interview you.

Goodbye, evening plans. Hello takeout pizza, TV and a frustrating wait.

                     At 10:30 that night, they found our car. It was running on fumes, parked only a few blocks from our house. No driver, no passengers, no fingerprints, nothing to indicate who had driven it. Such a letdown.

                     In the meantime, we had all discovered that at least three people who recognize the boys and the car had seen them driving it in the past 24 hours. They'd apparently showed off a bit, and given neighborhood teenage girls a ride. The officer who waited at our car seems convinced that we all know who did it. He said that they'd talk to the witnesses and the boys in the next day or two.

                      It's been 5 days. We've heard nothing, seen no police cars at the boys' houses, and none of the witnesses have been interviewed. I know we're not #1 on the to-do list, but I'd like to know that we're ON the list.

                      Meanwhile, knowing who these boys are has brought a whole new level to the proceedings. These are boys who spent hours in our house and our pool. They came to the family Easter egg hunts. My son spent many nights at sleepovers with them. Long ago, they were his best friends.

                     When they stopped spending time together, I assumed it was just one of those things – kids change. We still smiled, waved, said hello, occasionally loaned them things. It's a small neighborhood, and most everyone knows everyone else. Now I can see that perhaps there were more profound reasons the friendship withered. The contrast between my son, who gets $10 per month allowance (and tithes $1 of that) and regularly saves up to buy $50 and $60 video games, and someone who'd rather steal them, is pretty stark.

                        My husband is alternately furious and depressed that someone we know, someone who spent so many hours with our family, has so little regard for us. He is enraged when we see these boys around the neighborhood and they smirk. Word on the grapevine is that they've joined a gang. I wonder if we were an initiation.

                         My life experiences, fortunately or unfortunately, have prepared me for the idea that people close to you can have no regard for you, your family or your safety. What bothers me is all the memories that are now tainted, all the photos in the albums that we will no longer want to look at. These boys have spoiled my memories.

                        Terry said, "They're not doing any good to the stereotypes about their color." No, they're not. They did not commit these crimes because of their race. But, looking at my lily white, blond son and these dark, black haired boys, all many people will see is the color line. That's the kind of behavior that causes people to justify their prejudices. It's so frustrating to see people complain that they're stereotyped but then act in a way that cements the prejudice.

                       If my son behaved this way, I'd want someone to throw the book at him. It's not about who these boys are, whether we know or like them, or about their color. It's about behavior. This behavior is unacceptable. It also doesn't matter if you're young, old, rich, unemployed or anything else. This behavior is unacceptable.

                      When we picked up the car, I said to the officer, "What do we do now? They have the keys. They'll just drive away with it again." His reply was, "Yes, ma'am, we know."

                      I'm back to hoping that someone will steal my car, so they can be caught driving it.

                      My mother is 80; my dad died at 78. Neither of them ever had a car stolen; this is the second time we've had one stolen. They never had their house broken into. They never had their identity taken. They never, in lifetimes almost twice as long as mine, worried that their neighbors might know when the house was empty; they counted on their neighbors to watch it when they were gone. They rarely locked their doors. I just ordered a whole house alarm. If a child ever disappeared, the worry was that the child had drowned, not that they'd been kidnapped. No one ever would have said, "Was s/he alone?"

                     The world my children live in looks very different.

                     What's wrong with this picture? Why aren't more of us outraged?

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So, now, the "almost three years have passed" update:

We never did get anything back. When the boys were (FINALLY!) questioned, they denied any knowledge of a break-in, but one hinted that he might be able to lay hands on some of the stuff if he got a reduced sentence.

He obviously needn't have bothered negotiating for leniency. Apparently leniency is the name of the game. If the boys spent any time in juvenile detention, it was a matter of a few days, as we didn't see them ever noticeably absent from the neighborhood.

Most of the time, I'm not angry directly at the boys any more; resentment is counterproductive. We've run into some of their relatives, including one boy's mother, around town. We smiled, we made pleasant conversation. The boys' behavior may or may not be any reflection on the rest of their family or friends; heaven knows that I don't want to be held responsible for the actions of everyone I'm related to or know. The only real problem I have with both sets of parents is that no one ever apologized to any of us or tried to make any kind of amends. That might be because they're completely embarrassed; it might be because they're enablers. I'm not going to waste too much energy worrying about which it is.

I have noticed both an infant and infant furniture and trappings at both of their houses lately. I don't know if there's one baby or more, or who might be the parents. I do admit to not feeling entirely at ease with the thought of what kind of person this child or children might turn out to be.

Remember the kids who saw them driving the car? At least one was offered, but turned down, a ride. Two of those kids, kids who had also been my son's friends since they were about 6 years old, gave formal statements to the police, as did their parents. They agreed to testify at any kind of hearing, should they be asked. (They never were.) The officer who dealt with them was astonished. "We never get that kind of cooperation," he said. "Never. Sometimes either the kid or the parent will be willing, but never both, and we never have corroborating witnesses." There are not words to express how those two families delight me. Should they ever need my time, my money, my internal organs, they can have them.

My son was overloaded with gifts of knives and swords over the next year or two; his collection is larger than it was. It's in his room, now. For one thing, after finding out who the thieves were, the fact that they spent so little time in Alex's room makes more sense - at least one of them is terrified of reptiles. The snake and monitor lizard in his room now are better than a watchdog, and right next to the bedroom door.

We also have reptiles in the living room - a space issue, but there are other benefits. There's now a snake cage right next to the front door (directly underneath the key rack). This fact tickles me more than it really should. It's not a decent home safety plan, but it is a little bonus for having pets that we love and others don't.

Alex always kept his cash with him, afraid that if he left it at home, it might disappear, the way our carefully hoarded remodel money did. Then, he went to a sleepover with several other boys, and his wallet, with approximately $300, all of his ID and the gift cards from Christmas, was "lost." (Again, we're sure that it was one of the boys that we didn't know.) Now, with a job, he's keeping his money in the bank and carrying a debit card. Live and learn.

To his credit, he never felt unduly singled out or personally attacked after the robbery. When his little sister wondered out loud why her pricey American Girl dolls, furniture and accessories were left alone, when many of them cost far more than the knives, he was very matter of fact about it. "They took stuff they wanted. Even if they were selling the stuff, they wouldn't have thought that dolls were valuable." (I thought about the idea that the robbery might be gang related, and pictured the boys showing up to meet the gang leadership or the fence with their haul, saying, "It's a Samantha - she's retired!" It was an amusing picture.)

 It's no longer deeply painful to look through our family albums and see the younger versions of these kids. For the first year or so, my daughter would make a noise like a siren every time she saw one - "EEEEEEEE - it's T!" Now, we've all kind of compartmentalized; we used to know two boys that no longer exist. It's sad only in an ordinary kind of way, like when someone moves away and you lose touch. Things happen.

I try not to be angry at the law enforcement system. It's overburdened, I know. I'd still like a return to the days when law enforcement would turn out with figurative bells on to get a cat out of a tree. I miss Mayberry.

My sense of safety will never be quite the same. Welcome to "the new normal." It's an OK place to visit, but it looks like we'll have to make peace with living here.