Dear Sir, or even possibly Madam(although I don’t think a woman could lift it alone),
Maybe you are going through hard times, and the only way that you can feed your family is stealing. It must be incredibly difficult to come home every night (after a long day of standing on a street corner) and face your hungry family with only $3.00 in your pocket. I would imagine that your days start at about 5 am so that you can hit the recycling bins looking for cans that you can sell, or be one of the first in the social services line for food stamps or rent assistance. Maybe your are about to lose your home because you are so behind in you mortgage, you haven’t had a job in over 16 months, and you’re not sure where your family will live. Your sister and her kids have already taken in your cousin’s family, and wheelchair-bound father……and she only has 2 bedrooms. It must be incredibly difficult imagining your family homeless, and living under an overpass on the highway. I can only empathize your frustration, as you drive through middle-class neighborhoods looking for discarded metals that you can resell, and you see how fancy other people live .
” These people have everything so easy,” you think to yourself…..”with thier 15 year-old unairconditioned trucks, color televisions, and windows with intact, undamaged mini blinds”.
” There is no way that these people would ever have to save any of their hard-earned money for frivolous appliances,” you grumble to yourself.
“I’ll bet they just go to a fancy-shamcy store like Home Depot and buy a $150 air compressor on a whim…hardly any thought to it all.”
“It is their own fault for taunting me with the alley-aimed garage door open at 3 in the afternoon…and that shinney, year-old air compressor just beckoning to me from the very back of that jam-packed , yet still very well-organized, garage.” You imagine the tear-soaked faces of your starving children….and you go for it…
“Those Bourgeoisie Bastards will never miss it ! They have everything so easy”, “Just look at that lawn mower that propels itself”. You explode with emotion, because they have so much…and you , so little.
“I can pawn this for $30 , and we can all eat at McDonald’s for the whole week”, you shake with excitement, imagining filling your children’s little bellies with cheeseburgers.
“I know that my Lord will forgive me on judgement day”, you think; it’s not that you wanted to take our air-compressor……but you HAD to.
Maybe, just maybe, this is how it all played out……..or maybe you’re just a piece of crap who steals from other people………
THE CAVENDER DIARY 