Yesterday my neighbor made a startling confession.
“What did you do this time?” I asked.
“I left the garage door open.”
“You what?????”
I wondered whether to call the police or administer the appropriate punishment myself, maybe with the garden hose I had in my hand. Twenty lashes to the criminal. Ten lashes deducted from the appropriate 30 because the defendant copped to the gravity of her evil deed.
The other punishment, arguably more painful but only to the guilty party, is the loss of her leaf blower.
“It was brand new. Don’s gonna kill me.”
Don is her husband. And she’s right. He IS gonna kill her.
Not a word about the lesser crime, by modern standards, of stealing the thing.
In our present era, acts of blatant theft are the fault of “the idiot” who practiced what we used to esteem but no longer do: trust.
Why trust no longer “works” for us is the topic of today’s column. It is the conversation I wish I could have with people like my hapless neighbor. Why don’t we blame the thief and leave it at that? Why is it bad to expect people to be good? A columnist for this paper recently opined that we are “in a world of crime.” A purse snatching is the example he gave. In this case the victim deserves our sympathy. She had not forgotten to lock the garage but merely opened her car window, whereupon the thief reached across her to get the goods. Blaming the victim in this case would be ridiculous.
On the other hand, letting a creep con…
