VIOLATED!

by Wilfred Bereswill

I know this isn't my regular day to post and not even a regular day for the Stiffs, but I have to vent.

On Thursday I traveled to Phoenix for business.  I was picked up from the airport by the regional office in my contact's company mini-van, threw my suitcase and briefcase into the back of the van and spent the next 7 hours in the scorching Phoenix 115 degree heat.  In a long sleeve white shirt and tie no less.

At 5:45 PM three people from the office took me out to a fabulous dinner at Roy's Hawiaan Fusion in an upscale neighborhood.  We had great food and talk and a few drinks.  At 7 PM we walked out to the parking lot and the mini-van's driver door wouldn't open.  I got in the passenger side and opened the door, but my host just stood there looking at her vans door handle.  I asked what was wrong and she said something looked wrong.  I got out and took a look and somebody had punched out the lock.  The next thing she said was, "Is your stuff in the car?"

It was all gone. My suitcase with my clothes. My briefcase with my personal MacBook Pro, digital camera, iPod Touch, and so on.  It felt like I had been punched in the stomach.

If that weren't bad enough, all of the wedding videos I took with my new Flip video and had downloaded on my Mac were gone.  They were deleted off the camera as I put them on my computer.  I had finished putting all the video together with a bunch of pictures and had them nicely arranged with some cool effects.  I burned one disc, and it was in the computer when it was stolen.  It is gone.  That's what hurts the most.

I stood there on the parking lot, sweating, unbelieving, pissed, helpless, vicitmized and stunned.  It happened in broad daylight, in an upscale neighborhood, in a crowded parking lot.  Talk about bold.

To make it worse, we called the Tempe police.  They didn't even see fit to come to the scene.  We gave the police report by phone.  No wonder crime is rampant.  The police took the friggen' report by phone.

My associates were kind enough to take me to a mall to get a new shirt and underwear.  I went to the 4 star hotel with a red backpack with everything I had to my name.  The hotel supplied me with a pathetic disposable razor, a toothbrush with 1 row of bristles and a couple of tiny packs of toothpaste and shaving gel.

Not only did I lose all the wedding videos, but all my website design.  I have a new short story coming out this week and I now have to figure out  how to redesign my entire website.

I still have no idea about how I'm going to reclaim my possessions, but in the meantime I'm down to using my little netbook.