The Break-In

Newsletter 2022-03-21

I was gone for ten minutes. It was such a short errand that, before I left home, I debated whether or not I should even bother to lock the front door. Did I really want to spend five seconds putting my key in the lock and twisting, only to repeat the process in reverse a few minutes later? My laziness knows no bounds. But seriously, it’s not like anyone was going to try to burglarize my house in my safe suburban neighborhood in broad daylight during that tiny window of time. It’s clear from all the fairy gardens out front that we have kids, which means everything we own is either broken, sticky, or cheap (and sometimes all three). We’re not exactly a prime target for international jewel thieves. For whatever reason, I went ahead and locked the door—and it’s a good thing I did. That’s when the attempted break-in occurred.

All I had to do was drop off some paperwork at the school district’s administration building. The task couldn’t have been simpler, so naturally I had put it off as lon…