I’m not an anxious sort, but every once in a while, I wonder if it would be smart to retrieve the cracked baseball bat out of the trunk of my car and store it under my bed…just in case.
I’m not sure what just in case might be, though. We live in a suburb in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.[1] It’s no gated community, but you do have to go up a hill to get to our house. That’s why on Halloween, we never get trick-or-treaters. I’m counting on a potential home invader to be likewise deterred.
And yet, the Nextdoor app is full of posts warning about suspicious people walking in the neighborhood day and night.[2] Others have been spotted working their way down the street opening mailboxes.
See? It’s always down. They’re never working their way up.
The most serious and most common crime is the theft of catalytic converters from Toyota Priuses. That happened to my daughter’s car in another LA neighborhood, which led me to spend four hundred dollars at our local dealership for a “cat protector,” which looks like armor for a very short knight, Sir Cat of the Carbon Emissions. Apparently, the catalytic converter contains precious metals that thieves sell to crooked scrap yards for 700 bucks a pop.
Our house did get burglarized over twenty years ago. Shelley and the kids came home to find every drawer in every dresser, desk, and cabinet flung open. It was odd. They didn’t make a mess, nothing broken or scattered on the floor, just every single drawer opened. The police determined that someone had slipped through a sliding glass door in back. We had desktop computers and a large TV and other appliances, but none of that was taken. Nothing was taken from what we could tell. It’s a terrible Liam Neeson movie: “Nothing Taken.”
(Into phone) “What I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I’ve acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you…"
Shelley enters, “Nothing was stolen.”
“Really?” (into phone) “Sorry to bother you.”
Click.
This apparently was a snatch and grab, a crime of opportunity. The cops speculated teenagers or young adults were looking for jewelry or cash, something easy to stuff into their pockets. They must have left frustrated. We don’t keep cash in the house, and Shelley doesn’t wear diamonds or other precious stones. She prefers artsy, handmade jewelry. The best the thieves could have done with any of her stuff would have been to open a booth at a craft fair. However, we were still traumatized to know that someone had been rooting through our underwear. And judging our taste.
It reminded me of the one summer night thieves stole my dad’s 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass from the parking lot of the Cleveland Comedy Club where he and my mom had been watching me perform. Four days later, the police located the car twenty miles away, completely stripped. These guys were pros. They took everything. Even the doors. The only things they left were the engine block and one of my dad’s colorful 70’s era neckties on the front seat. For a long time, I teased him about the probable exchange among the thieves.
“What about the tie?”
“Hey, we’re criminals. We’re not clowns.”
After our little Invasion of the Nada Snatchers, we had an alarm system installed and put locks on the sliding doors. This is the very definition of closing the barn door after the horse has run away.
When you install an alarm system, you soon find your life has become one long series of false alarms. We had no idea we were inviting a ghost into the house that apropos of very little would haunt us in a dispassionate automated voice with warnings like “Fault. Front door.”
I could close a door in the pantry too hard, and our disembodied security bot down the hall would intone, “Fault: Living Room Window.” Or how about in the middle of a dark, silent night hearing an eerie voice downstairs repeatedly mutter something that you swear is “I’m going to slit your throat,” but in the bright sunlit morning turns out to be “Low battery.”
One late Saturday night I was home alone. Shelley had taken the kids to the East Coast to visit her family. With a buddy of mine, I went to a late showing of the movie “Face Off” starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta. I climbed into bed at about two in the morning, and no sooner did I turn off the light, when down the pitch-black hallway I heard an eerie voice intone, “I’m a-waiting…”
I froze in absolute terror… for about ten seconds, until I remembered that one of the kids had been playing Super Mario on the computer in the guest room. Turns out, when you take too much time to make a move, the Mario character says “I’m a-waiting…” I would never get the rights, but if I ever write a screenplay about a serial killer, it’s going to be someone with a bushy moustache, wearing blue overalls and a red cap carrying a heavy plumbers’ wrench and as he stalks his prey announces his presence with “I’m a-waiting…”
When our alarm goes off, we get a call or voice mail message from ADT checking on us. It’s always nothing. They must get so many false alarms; how can they take any of them seriously? And what could they do about it if they did?
I imagine the scene where I’m in the house held at gunpoint by a wild-eyed home invader, who’s pissed that the only cash we have is a pile of quarters sitting in the ashtray my daughter made in pre-school. And I can’t seem to convince him that Shelley’s handmade beaded necklace was crafted by a noted artisan from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and while not intrinsically valuable would look great on his significant other. The point of his gun nudges my lips as he informs me “You got a real purty mouth, aint ya?”[3]
After all, he traipsed all the way up the hill. He ain’t going home without at least knockin’ off a piece of ass.
That’s when the phone rings.
It’s ADT.
“Uh oh, buddy, you’re in real trouble now. Any minute a former mall cop who works part time as an Uber driver is going to burst in here and fuck you the fuck up.”
I’ve long since forgotten how many hundreds of dollars we pay for the security system each year[4] whose most sensible feature is the five-dollar sign planted in the flower bed in the front yard. Just like the fifty-cent sticker on the window of our 2009 Prius that indicates we have a cat protector. I’ve also seen cars with stickers that read “This vehicle is protected by a passive security system.” Doesn’t sound like much of a deterrent.
Although, what’s an aggressive security system? Somebody breaks the window of your Ford Focus which suddenly transforms into an Abrams tank with a swiveling turret that sprays Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with indiscriminate machine gun fire? That certainly would light up the Nextdoor app.
More worth the money might be a “passive-aggressive” security system. Someone tries to break into your car and a voice says, “Go ahead, steal the car. See what I care.”
Don’t underestimate the power of guilt.
Security experts will tell you the most effective deterrent is noise. We’ve all been awakened by a car alarm blaring in the middle of the night. Do we suspect a car being stolen? Do we, like a good neighbor, grab a phone, run to the window, and video the thieves so the cops can ID them? No, we lie in bed cursing the fucking idiot who set his alarm to go off whenever a pigeon poops on his windshield.
A barking dog is supposed to provide a useful heads-up. The only problem is that most household dogs are terrible at evaluating threat levels. To your typical dog, everything is Code Red: the mail carrier, the Amazon delivery guy, the neighbor dropping off the tools he borrowed, the wind in the trees. To your dog, each is a mortal threat. It is the opposite of the “Just the facts, m’am”[5] ADT ghost voice: “Fault: Front Door.” No matter who or what crosses your path, no matter how benign, the dog is going to scream “Drop your cocks and grab your socks, people! Mayday! Mayday! Bad shit’s comin’ our way! This is not a drill!”
How many shots of adrenaline have been wasted on false alarms? How many gallons of cortisol have been secreted because the house was settling?
Mass media primes us to be in a constant state of high alert. We are privy to violence committed everywhere in the country and around the globe[6] making us feel danger lurks in our backyards waiting to spring on us at any minute. I get emails from right-wing organizations and politicians warning me of the scourge of violent crime, even though statistics describe a decades-long downward trend. The theme of Donald Trump’s inaugural address in 2017 was “American Carnage.” There’s a lot of money to be made with fear.
That’s why whenever there’s a school shooting, instead of gun control, Second Amendment fundamentalists say what we really need is more guns. We should arm teachers.
That’s right, put it on the teachers. It’s not enough that these underpaid public servants have to dig into their own meager salaries to buy pencils and notebooks for their overcrowded classrooms, now they should also pack heat. That’ll fix it. I picture my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Loomis, writing on the board when a cold-blooded gunman kicks in the door. Mrs. Loomis, with Neeson-esque aplomb, whirls, pulls a Glock out of her waistband, and puts a cap in his ass. Double tap. That’s an NRA fever dream that would give Wayne LaPierre[7] a nocturnal emission.
“Boys and girls, that gentleman fucked with the wrong motherfucker. Stephen and James, would you please get a mop and bucket and clean all this blood up. We’ve got sentences to diagram.”
No matter how remote the possibility, it would be smart to be prepared, though. Right? I’ve never owned, shot, or even held a gun in my hand, so that would not be my weapon. Mine would be the aforementioned baseball bat. I know how to swing a baseball bat. That’s one thing I’ve done tens of thousands of times since Little League. I don’t have the same power I once had, but I can still square one up.
I’m not looking to knock anyone’s head off. I’d give him a warning as I waggled the bat.
“I’ve got a very particular set of skills… actually, just this one skill.”
Then I’d go for the knees. Disable the assailant(s), not kill them. Just make them sorry they chose my house.
Although, that could easily backfire. My brother, John, once told me about an expression he heard from prison culture: “Don’t bring anything to work you wouldn’t want shoved up your ass.” In other words, whatever weapon you think may protect you will more likely be turned against you.
That’s why, ultimately, I decided to keep the Louisville Slugger with the hairline fracture safely in the trunk of my car.
Along with a jar of Vaseline… just in case.
[1] I won’t get any more specific than that. I don’t want to give anyone any ideas… just in case.
[2] If I ever developed an app like that, I’d call it “Busybody.”
[3] See movie “Deliverance.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/
[4] Thanks to automatic renewals, I have no idea what I’m paying for anything anymore.
[5] To you kids out there, this is a reference to the old TV show “Dragnet.”
[6] I’m excluding the non-random purposeful violence of wars. And the drone attacks ordered in the name of the so-called “War on Terror.”
[7] Former CEO of the National Rifle Association. Note the phallic symbolism in his name, LaPierre: “The Peter.”
Dude, you're like a funnier, smarter male Erma Bombeck who isn't afraid to say "motherfucker" and tackle controversial subjects like anal rape.
Excellent... now I know where to get some good artisan jewelry on the cheap. Not considering the cost of the flight to LA, or renting a car, or taking you and Shelley out to dinner to thank you for allowing me to steal Shelley's handcrafted necklaces and, I hope, earrings. It's a complicated heist, but I think I can do it! I appreciate your support.