I had a few car break-ins with my previous car; it was one of those models that apparently is so easy to break into, it might as well not even have doors. I never lost anything of value, but it used to make me furious that someone had *yet again* broken or ruined part of *my car* just to see if anything was inside for them to take. I felt like sticking a note on the window saying "There is NOTHING in this car that you want. If you don't believe me, wait until I come back, and I'll open it up and SHOW you. If you want the outdated map in the glove box, you can HAVE it, just stop BREAKING MY %&$*#^% DOORS!"

I also have a "stranger-than-fiction" story about the only major theft I have suffered. Several years ago, I used to swim in the evenings at a central-city gym and pool complex. One night, I got out of the pool to find that some *scum* had broken the lock on my locker and taken everything. "Everything" included my bag (which had been a gift and had great sentimental value), clothes, shoes and socks, underwear, towel, wallet (ditto for the bag), glasses, car keys, house keys and parking-lot ticket (indicating where my car was. Hooray). So there I was, in the city, at night, in a wet swimsuit and without anything else whatsoever.

The people at the pool gave me a towel, and clad thusly I walked along the road to where I'd parked, verified that my car was still there, and asked the attendant to watch it until I could arrange something. If anybody needs some embarrassment in their lives, try strolling through a busy downtown shopping and restaurant district at 10.30 pm wearing nothing but a wet swimsuit and a towel. (It's a great feeling, knowing that the absolute worst thing that could ever possibly happen to you has ALREADY HAPPENED; I don't need to worry about the future like other people do, because nothing can *ever* happen which would be worse than that.)

Then I went back to the pool and called a locksmith to come and open my car and make me some sort of a key so I could drive it home. This all took a while. By the time I got home, I still had to arrange stopping all the cards and cheques in my wallet, changing locks etc, and to add insult to injury I had to buy a new pair of glasses, which were not cheap. In the week it took to get them, I couldn't drive anywhere; I can't see well enough without them and I didn't have contact lenses at that time.

So what's the "stranger-than-fiction" part? Well, over a year later, I had a phone call from the gym, which I had long since moved away from. They had been going through their lost property bin and found my bag. Nobody knew where it had been in the intervening year. Now get this: I went to pick it up, and it still had everything in it. Wallet, glasses, keys, everything. It was untouched. The money was still in the wallet. The inside of the bag was so damp and mouldy after a year that all the items inside looked like something from the X Files, but it all washed up OK in the end. I got every single item back.

The only explanation we could work out was that the thief had taken the bag, but somebody saw them before they could look through it. They must have panicked and shoved it into a corner somewhere in the building, where it was found goodness knows how much later and dumped in the lost property bin, where it stayed.

I think of this today and I still can't believe it happened.