Never Thought This Could Happen To Me

I knew at the time it happened that this was unusual, but as it recedes into the past, I still can't help being impressed at the sheer unlikeliness of it all. 

 

I came home from working at University of Houston one PM to find that someone had nailed a door up over the front window of our two-bedroom ground floor apartment. It turned out that this was because the front window had been breached. It turned out to turn out that we'd been robbed.

By the time I entered the story, the police had already been there. As it will turn out, they already knew who did it, and where they were likely to find them. Then they found them and brought them in. This is because our apartments, about a city block away from The Astrodome, were all on an electronic security system (which I accidentally tripped at least once). Our criminals didn't set it off when they broke in the front window to enter, but in order to easily carry our color TV out, they had to open the door, setting off the alarm.

The alarm, in turn, alerted the security guy for the apartment complex, a policeman under any name, he lived rent-free in return for willingness to check things out. He heard the alarm, saw the act conclude, and followed the perps enough to bring in a description and license.

The police, as they told me later, had been watching the criminals (a couple? oh, details) for a while, and when they "caught" the "squeal" as we savvy folk say, they asked the pair's preferred pawnbroker to kindly let them know when they came in with the stuff, and they did, and the cops took them in.

It stood this way for a while. We waited to hear back. We were anxious to have our new TV, which we'd purchased at Target only weeks before, instead of the tiny black and white portable that my sister had imparted to me in the 70s, which was too insignificant to steal. When we realized we would need to prove ownership, I went back to Target and found that the serial number was recorded in a registry they had to keep for thirty days, and since I asked on Day Thirty, they gave it to me so I could prove it was our TV. 

I called and asked if there was something I needed to do, since I wasn't hearing back. Oh, yeah, they said, come on in and get your set. Perhaps that's when I went and got the number. Anyway, I went in, and was treated to the glory of the vast property room (rooms, really) of the Houston PD. The guy who brought me down watched me pick out my comparatively humble set and gestured back at what seemed like three caverns full of consumer bounty: "Any of this other stuff yours?" he asked. Which is why I have all these projection TVs and yachts and things, if you've wondered.

But there it is. Our apartment was violated. They had the crooks before I got home and found out. They got the goods. They got us our TV back. If I'd called sooner, we'd have had it back sooner. There were never any echoes or repurcussions. 

I know! Hard to believe, right?

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