Have you ever had something taken from you that you’d never forget? February 2008. I’m 3 years old. 7:30 A.M. I’m walking with my mother to her car so she can drive me to pre-school, and we see broken glass.
My Mother: “Fucking hell, why me?”
I’m confused as to why my mother is now cursing and looks angry. Did I do something? Is she cursing at me? Before I can ask what’s happening, she hops on the phone with either my father or the police. I’m not sure because they both showed up. At the point everybody shows up, I’m just bored out of my mind sitting on the curb. My father asks me if I am ok, and I respond yes not knowing the bombshell that’s about to be dropped on me. Some losers broke into my mother’s car, stole the TVs, and stole my bookbag which had some of my toys.
My Father: “Jonathan, are you listening buddy?”
Me: “Yes?”
My Father: “Someone broke into your mother’s car and stole the tv’s and your bag”
Who the fuck steals a bookbag full of toys? What value can you get out of that? That’s just lame. Anyways, once my father tells me I go ballistic. I started crying, screaming, and trying to hit anybody in sight. My mother grabs me by the arm and looks me in my eyes with the most intense look I’ve ever seen. Genuine fear struck my body, and I froze. I had no choice but to listen to her and calm down because her anger for this situation was and still is much greater than mine. She had to deal with the damages done to her car, deal with the jerkoff police officers who insisted it
was her fault for parking by an elementary school, and she had to deal with my anger towards the whole situation. I have no idea how she didn’t explode and curse out everyone. I think any rational human being would freak out in these moments but not her. Anyways after I was forced to calm down the police officers told my parents that there was no working security camera, or any evidence left behind, so we were shit out of luck. At this moment my mother should have freaked out, but she kept her cool. I think she held it together for me which I appreciate but the damage was done. I was angry that some degenerates broke into the car and stole my stuff. I was very angry. That car was the car that drove me home right after I was born, I watched SpongeBob on those TVs when I was nervous before going to the dentist or the doctor, some of those toys were given to me by my great-grandmother who had passed away a year before.
I never got any of that stuff back by the way. I was confused by the lack of effort that the police officers gave. I know that it seems petty, I know that it seems selfish to blame the officers that were there, but I felt at the time and still a little bit now that they did the bare minimum. NYPD couldn’t find two more enthusiastic or dedicated officers? These two idiots try to blame this whole thing on my mother like she parked the car there so it could be broken into. I remember that one of the cops started listing off a bunch of reasons that it was her fault. They blamed her for parking by a school, they blamed her for moving the car afterwards so that more people didn’t try to steal stuff, they blamed her for the type of car she had. It was possibly the dumbest situation I’ve been involved with to date.
After the cops left my mother brought me home while my father brought the car to the mechanic to get the window fixed. I took a mean ass nap. I woke up with my hair all messed up
and I still felt angry. If I could have, I would have hunted down the guy(s) that broke into the car. And it’s not like all the cars on the block were broken into, only her car was and only my shit was taken from the car. I walked around the house like an angry old man. I was mad at the world. I entered the living room where my mother is on her laptop and asked,
Me: “Why?”
My Mother: “Why what?’
Me: “Why me?”
My Mother: “God knows. There’s a bunch of assholes in the world.”
Those words that came out of her mouth changed me. “There’s a bunch of assholes in the world”. I appreciated and still do appreciate her honesty and looking back I wouldn’t have been able to say it any better if I was her, but to say it so bluntly to a child might not have been such a good idea. Up to that point I had no idea that people did stuff like that. I thought that the world was all about coexistence and trying to help others if you can, because that’s all my parents taught me. But that idea was shattered in my mind, just like the car window. It didn’t help that the cops were two barely qualified losers who probably had no other choice but to become an officer and I know you think that I should probably be less harsh on those guys since it’s been 14 years, but I need a face to blame, and they fit that bill perfectly. I understand that this whole thing can be seen as trivial and minor in the grand scheme of everyone involved life but still to this day, I feel that this event changed everything. It’s almost like I had rose tinted goggles on up until the event and then after they stole those too. I’ve been told by my family that I was/have been more negative, pessimistic, and closed minded since then. Unfortunately, I must agree. If I could change my perspective on life I would in a heartbeat, but I can’t. I don’t even think that the next day I was the same person I was before. I vaguely remember going to pre-school the next day and not wanting to talk or play with anyone. I was just angry. And when it got to lunch time, I protected my life with my life as if anyone was going to take it. I hope those idiots enjoyed the tv’s that they most likely broke, removing them for the back of the front seats, and the toys that were half broken and had almost no value. If I had to put a number on the cost of the stuff, they stole I’d have to say about $200. But that might have been the most important $200 in human history so maybe I’m mad for no reason. But now I don’t trust my parents leaving their cars anywhere near that school. I have constant anxiety about potentially getting robbed or worse, and I think I might have stopped the average person as a person. I almost see them as a potential threat and try to plan for any sudden actions or moves. I don’t know if this makes any sense to you but to me it makes perfect sense. It would take a positive event in that magnitude to potentially change me, and God knows if that would revert me back. At the end of the day the thieves not only stole my bookbag and the TVs. They stole my childhood joy from me, and they took my belief in the world away. But that’s just another day in the Bronx. Now that I think about it, this is one of like 10 times that one of my parent’s cars got broken into in the Bronx. If this had been in the newspaper, I would have put it in here but since getting your car broken into over here is a common occurrence there wouldn’t be enough space in the newspaper to cover every instance of this happening every day.