Window: Rest in Pieces

Today's events broke up the monotony that I (Larissa) feared would have to be the subject of our blog post. Of course, don't feel too sorry for us. It would only have been a monotonous blog post because all we could have said was “We ate, we dove, we hung out”. Now we can add a little more to the repertoire. This morning, we ate and we finally broke down and bought some booties. How they can rent fins on this island that don't include booties is beyond me. Every dive, you have to walk down a rocky ouchy shore and then dodge sea urchins until you get far enough in the water to swim. Jason and I tried to make do with socks but all we got out of that was blisters from the rubbing of the sand stuck in our socks. Anyway, we finally broke down and bought a pair for each of us. We really didn't want to buy them because we already have booties at home that we didn't bring with us to save space. After we bought the booties though, we weren't sure how we survived without them. I also bought a little bag of 300 hair bands because I had managed to lose all of mine on the course of this trip. And scuba diving without a hair band is just a bad idea.

So was that the excitement I was going to tell you about? Of course not. After emerging from the water on our third dive of the day, we walked back to the car. That was when we noticed that the side window of the van was shattered out.

Someone had taken a big piece of coral and thrown it through our window. Our first thought was “Thank goodness” because right before we were going to swim off into the distance, Jason realized we had left the underwater camera in the car and he went to grab it. There were no other valuables in the car. Everyone we had talked to had told us that we shouldn't leave any valuables in the car and lock it up every time we left it. We followed their advice religiously. That car was locked, we put the club on,

no valuables were to be found. So we felt pretty safe. Jason had left his wallet in the car and for a few heart thudding moments, we though they might have found it. I felt under the passenger seat and lo and behold, there it was, wedged up under the seat into the cushiony part of the chair. They had missed it! They had found the keys to our townhouse though but Benny had wisely put a generic key chain on it so they didn't know what the keys opened. So anyway, no valuables were stolen out of the car. They had, I soon realized, stolen my 299 hair bands. AND to add further insult to injury, they got into our butter cookies and ate all my favorite ones (the sugar topped ones)!

Boy I was mad. Not only had they had the indecency to BREAK OUR WINDOW, they had eaten our cookies after failing to find anything else of value. The people who parked next to us said that their truck was searched but they had left the windows down so no windows were broken. Jason and I, devastated, checked our map for the nearest police station and headed that way. I realized that they probably had their grimy little fingerprints all over the cookie tin so I told Jason to be sure to mention it to the officer. I felt a shot of adrenaline as I pictured the police officer putting handcuffs on the bad guy and saying “Bet you wish you hadn't taken those cookies now, huh tough guy”. Jason went in to fill out a police report while I stayed in the car in my swimsuit fuming about the injustice of it all. The injustice only got worse.

The police officer filled out the top portion of the police report a few times before getting it right. This is the conversation that followed:

POLICE OFFICER: What items were stolen out of the car?

JASON: Oh, nothing valuable. Heh, they just got some of my wife's hair bands and ate some of our cookies.

POLICE OFFICER: What type of cookies were stolen?

JASON: Uh.. some butter cookies, but that's not a big deal, we just-

POLICE OFFICER: What brand of butter cookies were they?

JASON: Oh well, I dunno. But the window is our main-

POLICE OFFICER: I am going to need to know the brand, just in case the dispatcher happens to see them somewhere.

JASON: (speechless, so he is just thinking this line) Well, I think they ate them you idiot.

At this point Jason comes out of the building and asks me for the cookie tin. Thinking they are going to catch the guy from the fingerprint, I sit quite happily outside dreaming about how smart I am to have thought of the whole fingerprint thing in the first place.

POLICE OFFICER: Classico butter cookies. Ok. How many would say were stolen?

JASON: Uh, I dunno. About half the cookies.

POLICE OFFICER: Well how many cookies were in the tin to begin with?

-Jason looks on the side of the tin and sees no indication of the number of cookies-

JASON: Well it only has how many grams total.

POLICE OFFICER: Ok, so how much does each cookie weigh?

JASON: You know what, I think they probably took about 10 cookies. Yes, it is all coming back to me now.

POLICE OFFICER: What brand of hair bands were stolen?

JASON: I don't know, they took the whole bag.

POLICE OFFICER: (sigh) Alright, how many were stolen?

JASON: 300. You know, I am mostly worried about the window being smashed out. Did you put anything about the in there?

POLICE OFFICER: Yeah, here you go

Jason read over the police report but didn't really because it was all in dutch. The only think he could read was “Classico Butter Cookies......10” and “Rubber Hairbands.......300”. Jason thought he better get out of there before he went crazy. But figured he should at least try to ask about the fingerprints or else I would be mad.

JASON: Uh, do you guys do fingerprints here?

POLICE OFFICER: (snorts) Nope.

As Jason was leaving, another guy was just walking in and telling the front desk lady that his car had been broken into just one site up from us. I guess these jerks just made their way along the road, vandalizing as they went. The police station was a waste of time but we had to get the police report for insurance purposes. I guess Jason used his Visa to rent the car so it was covered under Visa insurance. We were quite relieved to find that out.

The rental lady was pretty nice. I guess it happens a lot. She said that the best thing to do is to keep your car windows rolled down. Well now she tells us! That was frustrating because most people we talked to told us to lock it up and don't leave any valuables. But then afterwards, they tell us we should leave the windows down. So that was our day in a nutshell. Hope that was more entertaining than eat, dive, hang out.