Monday, March 31, 2008

Dirty Thieves



Marty and I went to see a Villanova basketball game before the end of the regular season. My niece is a senior and a cheerleader, so we went for senior night. I was the official photographer for the family and was taking pictures of my brother, sister in law and niece as they were introduced onto the floor. As we were being whisked away into a tunnel into the bowels of the Wachovia Center for the big introduction, I spotted a Philadelphia semi celebrity, Howard Eskin.

Howard is a controversial television and sports radio host in Philadelphia. He makes me laugh cause he can be totally rude to callers if they don't agree with his opinions. I agree with him a lot of the time, which I guess is why he doesn't bother me. He'll call people dopes, morons or geniuses (that one is sarcastic...). I love that he calls Cowboys fans cock-a-roaches. You know, cause you don't hear anything from them when the Cowboys aren't winning, but when they are winning, they all come scurrying out. Howard was standing talking on his cell phone and there I was with a camera in my hand so I had to have a picture. I asked my brother to take the picture and I walked behind Howard and smiled and gave two thumbs up. I didn't want to disturb his call. Well he figured out my game and told the person on the phone to hold on and put his arm around me for a picture. He then told me to have a good night and got back on the phone. For a guy with a bad reputation, I thought this was very nice and I was flattered. I was so excited I oversmiled, so not my best picture, but pretty cool.




After the midcourt introduction of the seniors, I could not wait to get back to my seat to show Marty my picture with Howard Eskin. He was duly impressed, but in all the excitement, I put my sister in law's lens cap into my pocket instead of putting it back on the camera. I didn't figure this out until the next morning, so I sent a text to my sister in law to let her know that I had it and that I would mail it to her.

At work the next morning, I placed the lens cap in an envelope and realized that it was going to slide around too much. So I put the cap in the middle of a sheet of bonded paper. I then place a small piece of paper over the lens cap and I taped all around this piece of paper. This way the lens cap was secure in the middle of the envelope and would not slide around, but no tape was actually stuck to the lens cap. I thought this was pretty crafty. I folded it up, put it in a bonded envelope, added the postage and dropped it into the mail bin.

I get a call from my sister in law two days later. She received the envelope. However, someone had sliced open the end of the envelope, removed the lens cap and put the paper back into the envelope. Even the second piece of paper was still taped to it. What??? Why??? This pissed me off so much I was ready to start punching people. Why the F would someone want to steal a lens cap? I can only assume that they thought the lump in the middle of this envelope was a priceless coin, money, or something far better than a plastic lens cap. I really really hope that the dirty dirty thief was even more pissed off than me when they found that all that was in the envelope was a piece of plastic worth whopping $7. For this $7 lens cap they risked a penalty of up to 5 years in prison or up to $250,000 in fines. I'm sure that the theive's sins will catch up with him or her sooner or later. Perhaps he will get caught next time. OR I would love it if someone stole his stuff. That would be justice. So if anyone sees someone walking around with a lens cap and no high end, expensive camera to go along with it, please slug them for me.

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