Tuesday, August 2, 2011

I was robbed... but I couldn't tell

We all have those turning points in our lives. Those events or moments when we realize we need to make a change. Where something impacts us in such a way that we realize that yes- help is needed.

Mine happened when I was robbed.

I wasn't always the neatest person. Okay, I still may be working on it. But with each of our moves, which has been many, I have gotten better. Better at not having piles, better at putting things away where they belong. Better at not leaving piles of clean laundry everywhere.

I had 3 roommates my sophomore year of college. My dear friend Amy and I shared a room, the other two girls shared the other. Amy put up with my mess, as long as it stayed on my side of the room. I got pretty good at balancing my pile of clothes ever higher on my side of our extra long dresser.
my roommates and I- Amy in the gray, me in the blue- in our apartment

But there was one very distinctive moment where I decided, maybe I should try and be a little neater.

Eric and I were dating and at the time things weren't going so well. I decided we needed a heart-to-heart. I waited and waited for him to get home from work. He got home very late as he had gotten a piece of bark in his eye at work and had gone to urgent care to get it taken care of. By the time he got home he was extra hungry and tired. I was more than willing to run out to get some food with him knowing we could get a chance to talk.

We headed back to my apartment so I could grab my wallet. The front door was unlocked, as it usually was as two of my roommates had something against using their keys as they always forgot them. When we entered the apartment there was a college age guy sitting on the couch. "Hi" I said in passing as I headed over to the desk, figuring he was here waiting for one of my 3 roommates. Eric sat on the couch by him and began eating from Amy's supply of jelly beans, he has never been able to resist candy. As I was gathering my things another guy came from the backrooms or from back behind what we nicknamed "the chastity line". You see at BYU, you are allowed to have the opposite sex over to your apartment they are just not allowed to be back in the bedrooms. The guy sitting on the couch stood up and left with his friend.

"Who had a boy back there?" I asked in disbelief. I headed back to see which of my roommates was guilty. My room was empty, in the other room one of my roommates was asleep- and no she wasn't faking it, she was truly asleep.

"Who was that guy?" I asked waking her.
"What guy?" she asked clearly confused.

It was at that moment that I realized we had been robbed. We had been recently warned of young guys that would come into unlocked apartments and if someone was there they would act like they were looking for someone and apologize for going to the wrong apartment and then leave... and if no one was there, or sound asleep in our case, then they were in luck.

I went back out to the kitchen and now noticed the open kitchen cupboards. They had stolen my handi-snacks! In the end as we did an inventory we realized they had only taken a few snack foods and about $20 cash- we were very lucky.

As the police came over to interview Eric and I to get a description, which Eric was not very helpful as one eye was bandaged and his good eye was focused on the jelly beans, they looked around the apartment. When they went back to my bedroom and saw my dresser, clothes spread on top, drawers pulled out they asked me if they robbers did that.

"No," I said while blushing, "it was like that."

Yep, that was a turning point in my life... when your room is so messy you can't tell if you have been robbed, it might be time to clean up your act.

26 comments:

  1. They really were pretty daring to enter a residence while someone was actually inside. Glad it was only a minor theft. Did they ever catch the guys?

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  2. Ha! That cracks me up. Not the 2 guys robbing you part, but the mess part. I think it may be a right of passage for every teenager to be so messy that you can't see the floor through the clothes. Or in your case, the dresser.

    And those guys had a lot of ba***. Did they get caught?

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  3. That's funny that they wondered if your messy room was from the robbers!!

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  4. How scary! I'm glad you didn't lose a whole lot of stuff. And I'm with you - I'm not the best housekeeper and it was HORRIBLE when I was younger (right out of high school).

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  5. Wow your roommate was lucky. My friend from a past life had a roommate who was hmmm....not attacked but def touched I guess don't know what words I want. Anyway...yeah. My house looks like it has been ransacked right now. *sigh*

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  6. I am so not neat. I am messy, and always have been. It's just part of my charm.

    Glad nothing bad happened to you guys!!

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  7. Oh wow, what a story! Hubby and I aren't very neat either. I used to be (before I met my husband and had my kid, lol), but having a kid and a husband and pets... It's very hard to keep things clean! Our bedroom is a little messy, but MOST of the mess is on our dresser as well. I bet our dresser looks like we've been robbed as well. =P

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  8. I jokingly say that now. If someone came and robbed our house, I would never know it.

    Maybe its time for me to clean up. :)

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  9. Greatest. Post. Ever. :) And so classic!!! What in the world even made you remember this? I had forgotten all about it, but now, I'll never forget again. ;)

    And yah, you were really messy. But i love you all the same. :D

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  10. wow, makes me want to clean up the mess here... well maybe after a game with the kids.

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  11. Haha, sad but SUPER funny! Hahaha, I love this story!

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  12. I can't believe the nerve of some people! How scary for your roommate! So glad it is one of those "funny" stories in your life and not a sad one. Ya know? lol

    Hey, perhaps the mess distracted them to where they didn't take more! LOL

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  13. That is hysterical!!! Pretty sneaky and rather ingenious really... I had my classroom broken into one time, thieves stole all kinds of stuff out of my room and 3 others and was making a pile of things when he was scared off so the only thing really "missing" was a bite out of a muffin that he/she left :)

    Btw, those walls in the picture look strangely familiar...did you live at Cinnamon Tree apts?

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  14. Oh my goodness, scary! And funny at the same time ;)

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  15. I got goosebumps thinking about that girl sleeping in her room while the apt. was being robbed. That could have been so much worse had the circumstances been a little different.
    The rest of the story funny! I guess sometimes it takes something drastic to change our ways!

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  16. I had the opposite situation when my apartment was robbed. I knew exactly how many CD's & DVD's were gone! Of course the broken window made the break-in more obvious. That is still creepy that that guy did that!

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  17. Oh, I'm cracking up!!!!

    I am that messy, too. Um, still. Oops.

    We didn't have apartments at my college, but during the set "intervis" hours, guys could be in our rooms. As long as we kept a shoe in the door and at least one foot on the floor.

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  18. I am pretty messy - I drive Jerk Face crazy with all of my little piles.. which are pretty little because he's on me about it all.of.the.time!

    That's really scary about walking in while your place is being robbed! Knowingly or not!

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  19. Oh my gosh, how embarrassing and hilarious!!!

    He took Handi-Snacks? I mean they're good and all, but that's funny!

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  20. Dang, that's crazy! And I'm afraid I can relate to being so messy I wouldn't be able to tell if I were robbed...my bedroom, that is. The rest of the house looks ok (usually).

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  21. Shaka Lacka.. I can't believe they took your handisnacks! What a low blow! I know its not funny but 'bark in his eye'? What?! My son always tells me he has a wood chip in his eye when he has sleep in them.. or when his sock has more cotton on the edge, he says its a wood chip.. so when you said that, I thought it was a joke.. on a more serious note-- sorry to hear ya'll were robbed!! EEK!

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  22. Haha, oops!

    It's okay, I'm messy too.

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  23. Oh, Emmy. You make me laugh. I may be borderline messy like that. It is a curse, isn't it? Something I have been working on basically my whole life, and not really improving. Maybe I need a robbery to cure me?

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  24. I am in a panic just thinking about unlocked doors! LOL
    Our doors are always locked!

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  25. Ok that is both really sad and really funny!!! First of all, heart to heart=DTR (define the relationship) in rexburg and people were famous in Rex for having them on the second date, LOL!!! second, we NEVER locked our doors in our byui apartments before I got married, but I had gone to school in California and that was just not in my habit so I would always lock my roommates out on accident and have them all furious about it when I would come home at curfew and they would be sitting at our door waiting for me to come home with the keys. Hahahaha.

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