My car was robbed this afternoon. It was parked on the street in a residential area; the window was broken and things were taken. In the daylight.
Not, you understand, the things that we would expect them to take. Sure, they got the empty purse from the glove compartment and the wallet out of the bag in the backseat, but nothing else. And reposing in my packet is my credit card, my debit card, my drivers license, student id, and costco card. They got my insurance cards (though the health one had expired, and the car insurance one has a replacement as of next week), my free haircut punchcard at Great Clips, $20 in quarters, $20 in bills and . . . oh, right: The History of King Richard III by Thomas More. Though of the four copies in the backseat, they chose one of the paperbacks. The one that I needed the most (it had my notes in it) but not the most expensive one.
What did they leave? I'm sure you want to know. 1) The Kitchenaid mixer I got for Christmas and need to return to get a color that I want and 2) my PASSPORT. Isn't there a good market for passports? My quick internet search told me that it was worth $10,000 to $15,000 on the black market. So they leave that and the expensive kitchen appliance, and take the book that has value to me, some things that often have value and in this case didn't, and my sense of security.
Also, it's really cold and I don't have a car window. This makes me sad.
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3 comments:
maybe it was one of your students. or a moronic bibliophile. or someone that really likes thomas moore but wanted to be nice.
I thought I posted earlier, but my comment seems to have been eaten.
It appears to me that this was some sort of act of scholarly espionage. Some competitor wants to steal your insights into The History of King Richard III. The theft of the other items was merely a clumsy attempt to make it look like a random crime.
Dare I ask why you had four copies of The History of King Richard III in your car? Or at all?
I had multiple copies because it is one of the texts a chapter of my dissertation focuses on, and I had been working on said chapter (having taken my two paperbacks to the library to raid their bibliographies, and having picked up the scholarly editions of both the Latin and the English versions, 'cause he wrote it on both languages, and they're different, just to make things easy).
The only flaw in your argument is that I don't think scholars are usually strong enough to break windows.
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