Tuesday, November 10, 2009

An Elegant Response

Getting your bike stolen sucks. Not just kinda. It's the suckiest type of suck-ness. It makes you question the worth of humanity and make you feel sorry for yourself in the most extreme way and can cause your tongue to lash out in the most violent and inappropriate fashion. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.

So, there was this ad on craigslist today that just immediately made an impression and has stuck with me all day:

http://spokane.craigslist.org/bik/1460132683.html

Since the link will soon die, here's the text:

My stolen Huffy (plasma center on 3rd)

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Date: 2009-11-10, 1:28PM PST
Reply to: sale-2t2wr-1460132683@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

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This is to whoever stole my bike outside of the plasma center on 3rd: I hope you fall, hard, and I hope you have a terrible life, it's what you deserve. To anyone looking to purchase of crappy old huffy 'backwater' mountain bike, it is probably my stolen bike.

I love this response on a bunch of different levels. First, the grammar. There's capital letters and punctuation. Yeah, I'm a sucker for people who write good.

Then there's the whole plasma center deal, which I have no doubt is legit and pisses me off that some douche would cop a bike from someone while they're in the middle of getting their blood screwed with because they have to, out of necessity. Lamer than lame.

But what I really love is this person's adjustment to reality. There is no overbearing vitriol as in "if I ever find you, I'm gonna rip your face off", or anything like that. There's no whining and hoping that someone will feel sorry. There's just an acceptance of the fact, and something that must be said in order to get it out of your system and move on with your life:

"I hope you fall, hard, and I hope you have a terrible life..."

Dude, you rock. Truly sorry about your bike, that sucks huge.

3 comments:

Bill Foss said...

My son had his garage broken into and his bike stolen a couple of weeks ago. Very sad and also inspirational on a vigilante level.

My bike was stolen when I worked at Gonzaga. I realized that I really knew how Pee Wee felt and why he made the trek to the basement of the Alamo.

I would lay awake at night and wonder where my bike was, and how cool it would be to have a GPS tracking device. I would ring the doorbell of the house and simply say, "Give me my f@#king bike back. Now." I also dwelled upon the plastique bike seat concept too.

Sigh.

jwcidh said...

As a 8th grader, my brothers bike was stolen. The next day, my friend and I spotted it in the courtyard of a house. I wasn't about to get caught trying to sneak into this house to take it back. I went home and told my dad. He rounded up my two brothers, we all jumped in the station wagon and headed to the house. All four of us calmly walked in the house and grabbed the bike. The man in the house saw us, stood up, and watched us leave. Never said a word! It was the best ending to a stolen bike tale I could've imagined. Thanks dad.

Pat S said...

Thanks for the great stories, guys. None of my stolen bike stories have happy endings. My first stolen bike happened at the barber shop while I was getting my hair cut. I was about 10 and it was a totally rad 3-speed schwinn fastback. With a rear slick. MF bastards. I've hated haircuts ever since.

But I do have one great, sort-of-related story. I was playing little league baseball and we had just gotten our new hats. Huge event. And then after practice, some older kids showed up and grabbed my hat off my head. Shit. No way I could fight back and win. But just then my Mom showed up and in one fluid motion she grabbed the hat off the kid's head and swung her leg up and gave him a shot in the butt. And a tongue-lashing.

I didn't rub it in, but he knew and and I knew that my mom had just kicked his ass.