Theft

Yesterday my bag was stolen out of my gym locker with in it my phone, my keys, my clothes and my wallet. They simply broke open the lock and took out everything, in plain sight; yet nobody saw anything and nothing was caught on camera.

I was left standing at the gym, without my street clothes, without money for the tram home, without a tram card, without a way to contact anybody to get them to help me, without keys to get into my house once I got there and without very much of an idea how to continue from there.

For a while there I felt really pretty down and desperate. The people at the gym were kind enough to lend me some money to get my ass home with public transport. I jumped on in the good hope that somebody was hope and started thinking on the tram. I thought for a while and then realised that I wasn’t quite as unlucky as I had thought.

You see a bad thing had happened to me, but it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Yes, there are inconveniences, but it could have been so much more inconvenient. Let me explain, the morning before my bag was stolen I just got around to handing in a receipt for 50 euros that had been in my wallet for weeks. That money will now be wired to my account. A few days earlier I got paid at my work. It was a huge wad of cold hard cash. I’ve been known to just carry that around in my wallet and slowly (well, not so slowly I have to admit) spend it. This time around I took it out and left it at home.

I sometimes take my laptop to school and leave it in my gym locker (something that I will obviously never do again), but this time I didn’t. I had almost no cash in my wallet for them to rejoice over. I didn’t even take my book in the morning, something I normally always do but decided against for some odd reason on this day. What was more, I had just bought a new jacket a few days ago and for some reason they left that. I think it was too big for them to take. That was the most expensive item in that locker. They took my worthless shoes, but left the jacket.

What was more, when I got home my housemate was still there. Even luckier, she had been planning to leave but had been held up. Both she and my other house mate were planning to be out till late at night, which would have left me stuck without cover from the cold and without money to hide inside somewhere. Again, luck was on my side.

So, all in all I was incredibly fortunate in my misfortune. Yes they got my bag and yes it’s going to cost me money to get my bank card back, a new phone, a new driver’s licence and those kinds of things, but things could have been so much worse. Plus I get the satisfaction that for all the risk they went through they got about 10 euros, which really does make my day a bit better.

The only thing I really regret is that the phone wasn’t mine. It belonged to a friend who had a lot of text messages she wanted to keep on there. I haven’t told her yet (I don’t have her number), but I’m not looking forward to that.