onioncloute

This wasn’t the first time I’d had my car broken into. Since moving to Richmond eight years ago, I’d say it’s been done about a dozen times in four different neighborhoods. First, it was my trusty white Corolla, parked outside of my shotgun apartment on Ellwood. That time, they broke the window and made off with my make-up bag. Joke’s on them--I don’t even wear make-up! They scored some Burt’s Beeswax, crusty mascara, and a pocket mirror in a “Girls Raised in the South” bag I was embarrassed to own anyway. I filed a report with the police, for insurance purposes, and had a mobile window-fixing service come handle the rest.

Later, living in Westover Hills and then Church Hill, finding the contents of my Outback rifled through was a semi-regular morning occurrence, and the shock soon faded into annoyance.

But this last time was different. When I got in my car on this particular morning, there, on the driver’s seat was a cellphone--a white iphone 5 with a flowery blue case. It suddenly dawned on me: Someone had been in our car the night before and, instead of taking anything of ours, they left behind something of theirs. Evidence! A clue! The phone was dead, so I headed home to plug it in, and then the real fun began.

I posted about the phone on Facebook and, within the day, about 150 people had liked, laughed, cried, and commented on what they would do next. My first instinct, before realizing the phone was locked up tighter than Fort Knox, was to look for “Mom” in contacts. Everyone has “Mom” in their contacts, right? I’d call this lady from the phone and see where the conversation went from there.

The mothers in my Facebook feed--my actual mom, mother-in-law, step-mom, friends’ moms--chimed in to say the same thing: Call the police! Surely, they’ll file a report and can use the phone to track the perp! These well-meaning, very sincere women clearly watch too much Law & Order and expected Benson & Stabler to emerge from the wings, dusting the phone for prints and following a series of leads, all while delivering stony one-liners and smoldering looks. I, on the other hand, had the scene from The Big Lebowski playing in my mind: “Wouldn’t hold out much hope for the tape deck though. Or the Creedence.”

No, I wouldn’t be filing a report. The idea of my tax dollars being used to track down someone who actually gave me something and, at worst, would have made off with a handful of change seemed absurd. Then what, you know? This person goes to jail? They’re rehabilitated and never steal from anyone again? I get a nice, fuzzy feeling of justice having been done? Nah.

What I actually got from the experience was greater than justice. It was comedy gold. Memes, gifs and jokes that kept me amused for at least a day. I also got advice:

“Call their whole fam and meet them for lunch...at church”

“I suggest dick pics to everyone in his call log.” (Classy!)

“Or maybe it is a phone taken from someone else's car? Odd, nonetheless!”

And, once I realized the phone was pin-locked…

“Ask Siri to call mom!”

“Have you tried to swipe the other way and see if he put a emergency contact number in?”

“Try this: Even when your iPhone is password locked, all you have to do is Press and Hold Down the Main Home Key on your phone to access Siri. Then say to Siri, “Contacts ICE”. Siri will then display all the information you have saved as ICE. If you place any other words in the name field besides ICE, your phone will sort it differently and Siri won’t recognize the contact as ICE. Maybe you can get Mom's number that way as well.”

“Did you try a couple simple passwords like 1234?”

Plus, a link to a YouTube video of a human turd teaching people how to break into a pin-locked iphone.

All interesting but not effective. The phone was in sleep mode, there were no incoming calls, and none of the hacks offered or researched actually worked.

So, I asked around to try to find out what would happen to the phone if I turned it into the police. My friend-of-friend police contacts were reticent, apparently not keen on the idea of speaking theoretically. File a report, they said, and a detective will be assigned to the case. Nope.

There would be no confrontations, climaxes or conclusions to this ‘crime.’ Instead, I learned two valuable lessons: Facebook is giddy at the opportunity to dissect a caper gone wrong. And, don’t forget to lock your car. You never know what you might find in the morning.

I wish my Dad could see the new growth on the cactus I rescued from his kitchen table. It was all but shriveled to nothing when I found it, back in March, set down in a pot but not actually planted, struggling to stay alive, limply reaching toward the kitchen windows for freedom or at least photosynthesis.