My backpack was stolen from my car this weekend. It contained nothing of notable resale value, but plenty of tremendous personal value to me. The bag itself was a JSS backpack which I bought from a friend immediately after he’d won it in a tournament. I think I payed 5 or 6 dollars.
The front pocket contained a pocket knife my dad gave me about 15 years ago, and a bag of toothpicks Mary bought me 8 months ago. The next pocket back contained a TI-89 calculator(replaceable on ebay for ~$10, plus this one was old and quite worn), about 40 – 3×5 cards, some assorted and mechanical pencils, a stapler, some cellophane tape, and an eraser. The slim pocket behind the straps contained some books, I don’t even remember which, but I know there was a US constitution booklet in there. The large pocket contained:
-my journal for movie class(although everything written in it had already been graded)
-my “textbook” for workout class, though as it was a half-sem class, it’s already done.
-my much beloved fake-leather portfolio that I’d gotten for free through student governement last fall. in this was lots of irrelevant papers, such as a printout of a monty python sketch and some Rubik’s cube algorithms. Also there were some papers that contained random notes I’d taken that served as reminders of things, such as the height of the arch(630 ft), the height of the tallest building in this city(593 ft), what ykk on zippers stands for(Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha), what wile E coyote’s middle name is (Ethelbert), and what you call those signs that are staggered messages on the side of the road(burma shave signs). Also inside this folder was a presonal reflection I had written, some thoughts of myself I needed to put down on paper. I’d intended to transcribe it to lj, but that won’t happen now. I might be able to recreate a rough approximation at some point. There were also a few things in this folder which could be classified as “important.” Probably none of them as important however, as what was in
-my binder. This contained every shred of paper I had received from or produced for class this semester. Ever assignment sheet, every syllabus, every paper I’d written. There were no completed ungraded assignments, which was lucky.
-Inside my binder, of particular note was the birthday card that Mary made for me this year. It was awesome, S/A never saw it, and now it’s gone.
So, in the end, the thief came away with a backpack, some school supplies, and . . .a rather noticeable chink of my heart. I have another backpack, and another binder to take up the slack, It’s no big deal really, but it’s pretty fucked up. Whatever they were after, they got lots more than they bargained for, and on the whole, it’s pretty clear that I lost a lot more than they gained.
I suppose I should remember the Socrates quote also written on a slip of paper in the portfolio:
“He is richest who is content with the least”
Sometime in the future I plan on writing about how this event makes me think about crime, and the odd thing that the theft prompted me to do.
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