Greg Barila recounts the horror of his home being burgled in the run down to Christmas
SOME people will try to tell you Christmas is a time for giving but in my recent experience, it’s also very much a time for taking — namely stuff that isn’t yours.
SOME people will try to tell you Christmas is a time for giving but in my recent experience, it’s also very much a time for taking — namely stuff that isn’t yours.
Last week, a very bad elf broke through a side window at our home, filling their sack with as many valuable items as they could get their grubby little fingers on — including all the presents under our Christmas tree — before, I presume, jingling all the way to the nearest pawn shop.
I suspect in criminal circles this is called ‘doing a reverse Santa’. I call it a low act.
Being broken into is a sickening feeling that sits in the pit of your stomach and robs you of your most precious possession — your right to feel secure in your own home.
The fact we weren’t home at the time is a minor blessing.
But not being there means you can only speculate as to all the things your uninvited guest might have done and seen and touched in your home when you weren’t there to defend it.
Did they act alone?
How long did it take them to gain entry?
Were they in your home for minutes or hours?
Suddenly every object is a cause for deep suspicion.
“Were those scissors there when we left?”
“Did you open this drawer?”
It also triggers a chain of tedious processes — police reports, insurance claims, security checks — that only serve to add insult to injury. Being burgled sucks.
The only practical thing to do, of course, is try to remember your stolen goods were ‘only things’.
But everyone knows that’s just a little lie we tell ourselves to help us cope with what is necessarily a deeply upsetting and emotional experience — particularly when the real value of your belongings is not just monetary but also sentimental.
That ring your late mother gave you for your 21st birthday, those earrings you bought on holiday in Italy, that watch your grandfather left you that he wore during the war.
My partner’s mother still laments the loss of a cache of precious jewellery, stolen in a break in nearly 30 years ago and tells how she was forced to put up an “emotional wall”, just to stop herself from thinking about it, so upsetting was the whole ordeal.
For years afterwards, she looked in every pawn shop window with a special kind of hopeful longing.
Breaking and entering is a plague on all our houses.
According to SAPOL in its 2015-16 annual report, housebreaking was up 5.8% to a staggering 8638, or an average of 24 break-ins for every day of the year.
Break-ins on sheds and garages were also up 2.6% to 4875 offences.
At this rate, being broken into might not be so much a matter of if but when.
With many of us locking up and leaving for the holidays, may I suggest making a security checklist and checking it twice? Because being robbed at Christmas is not very nice.