My Wonderful Weekend

           Most of you have probably had the experience of losing something important. Maybe it was your wallet, your phone, or your dad’s car keys. You went through all the stages: first the initial realization when your heart drops into your stomach, then the panic, and finally the frantic searching.

            Perhaps fewer of you have had the experience of having something important stolen. In some ways, it is better to have something stolen. Instead of taking responsibility for your irresponsibility, you can pin all the blame on someone else. Your feelings of guilt and shame for having done something so stupid can turn into anger towards someone else. It’s always easier to fault other people than it is to fault yourself. As nice as blame-shifting is, having something stolen from you is also much worse than losing something in a few obvious ways. The tried-and-true method of retracing your steps will no longer work since you do not know whose steps to retrace. It’s harder to recover stolen things.

            On Saturday I got to experience all of these feelings. My friends and I visited the middle school cross country meet to watch the subbies compete, and afterwards I went for a run with Aryan, my usual running buddy. We left our things out of the way next to a traffic cone. We figured we had little to worry about since we were in the middle of nowhere and almost everyone had left. Just to be safe, however, we left a note on the traffic cone which read, “Uni High XC: Went for a run, we’ll be back. Leave this stuff here.”

            After half an hour or so, the weather started to look nasty so we headed back. When we arrived, all of our things were gone. Aryan’s homework, wallet, clothes, and bag, along with my wallet, my phone, and my dad’s car keys (among other miscellaneous bananas and stuff) had vanished. We resisted the urge to panic. First we asked the two people remaining at the course if they had seen anything. They saw nothing. We still resisted the urge to panic. Aryan still had his phone, so we made some phone calls. We called our coach, who must have been busy. We called my phone, but no one answered. The sky opened up and started pouring rain. We found a small sheltered spot and called Aryan’s parents to get a ride home.

            I was not optimistic. My dad’s car was stranded in the middle of nowhere, and I’d lost my wallet, my phone, and everything in them. Suddenly, it hit me. I could use “find my iphone” to find my iphone, and everything else would probably be with it. I raced to the computer to check, and quickly located the device. It was at the offices of Gregg Rose, a local dentist and cross country coach at St. Matthew school, my alma mater.

            I hopped in the car and sped to his building. The door was unlocked, but the lights were off. From the far corner, I could see light coming from under a door and hear the rumbling of a conversation. I walked into the room to find Dr. Rose chatting with Mr. Mears, the athletic director of St. Matthew. He took one look at me and said, “Oh, are you here about the bananas and stuff? I was just about to send out an email.”

            “Yeah,” I replied, not being able to think of anything else to say.

            “It’s outside in the bed of my truck,” he told me.

            “Ok,” I said as I walked away. It didn’t occur to me how ridiculous the situation was. Having been in a complete stupor, I didn’t ask him any questions, so I’m not certain what happened. However, I will speculate about what happened and try to make as few assumptions as possible. First, he saw our stuff lying about unattended. Not reading the note next to it, he hauled it into the open bed of his pickup truck and drove to his office. Perhaps he was thinking it had been left behind accidentally, or perhaps he took it so he could keep it out of the coming rainstorm. He must not have heard the phone ringing, since it had been tossed in the bed of his truck. Then, he probably forgot to move the things inside, and instead left them in the rain. Alternatively, he may have thought there was nothing important in the two heavy bags he picked up, but instead just a bunch of bananas. After all, he did refer to them “bananas and stuff.”

            By the grace of God, all of our stuff was unharmed, albeit a bit wet. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m still mad. If our stuff had been left where it was, it would have been fine. We returned well before the rain began. Thanks to what must have been a series of bone-headed decisions, however, we instead had to track down our waterlogged items after a stressful hour of searching. Thanks, Dr. Rose.