Thieving neighbors

I can think of three major times when I've had something stolen from me. The first was my second year of college--I parked in a park and ride lot to catch the bus to campus. I would arrive around 7-7:30 in the morning and get back sometime in the afternoon. I think that I might have left my door unlocked on that occasion, by accident (I practically always lock my car, even in the driveway) but that doesn't soften the blow. I "unlock" the door (though it might've been unlocked to start with) and climb in... then it hits me that something is different. I had different pieces of junk "decoration" in my car at the time and some were missing but I looked for my case of CD's... under the seat, in the back seat, and so on... gone. Just CD's you might say--many of them were originals but what was so painful about it was that these were "personal" items. The music I listened to reflected my personality at the time and my music preferences weren't common enough for anyone else to benefit from those CD's... so I was hurt without anyone else benefiting. It hurt, and I cried; to me it was unthinkable why anyone would to that.

The second time was a few summers ago, a weekend afternoon on campus. I was taking a summer programming class (C for Java programmers) and was working on a program in the lab, my car parked outside the building. The same building I work in now, by the way, when I'm at my lab operator job. It gets extremely hot in the summer and my car had a leaky A/C (I had to add freeon every once in a while, and I think at that time I was out) so I left the windows cracked to make it more tolerable when I came back out. I spent a few hours doing my program, and came back to find... the window had been pushed down (and incidentally covered with fingerprints) and my CD deck pulled out. The CD's of course were all copies and none were taken, but the deck had literally been ripped out (the wires weren't even cut, but ripped) and the front panel smashed up. This time I called the police and they took those prints. They actually caught the guy who did it--we figure he was pulling these, selling them to pawn shops and buying drugs. Oddly enough, this particular theft didn't hurt me quite as much--I could replace the cd player but not the CD's that had been stolen before. Although, I did end up spending the rest of the afternoon with the campus police, getting myself fingerprinted.

The third time was yesterday. Somebody stole my bike. For several months I've had it locked up under the stairs at my apartment complex, just like many other people do, but when I got home yesterday... found it missing. Why? Well, I know that it's a season now where many new people are moving into the neighborhood. And I hate suspicion, but when I got home yesterday I was watching two boys walking back and forth in front of my building. They walked to the other part of the building, into the breezeway, came back, looked in mine, and eventually left. And I guess I want someone to blame so when I see suspicious looking strangers who don't live there looking up in all the buildings, I can't help it.

I went scanning the neighborhood after that, looking in the breezeways to see everyone else's bike but not mine. And you know, I just don't get it.

Why do people steal things? I couldn't do it, the remorse I would feel would literally tear me to pieces--do these thieves have no conscience? Didn't their mothers teach them that you can't take things which belong to other people? I can almost understand the drug addict who had to get a fix, that he wasn't acting sensibly. And he's gone to jail, I know. (The government sends me letters informing me of his court dates and so forth.) But these kids who just take things? Do they not realize what a grave moral sin it is to do this? Yeah I know it's just a bike, but it's my personal property, so I feel like I've been personally violated. I just don't understand why.