Mom-Burglar

Our neighborhood has had seven break-ins in the past few months. No, I don't live in the ghetto, but I do live in an area with lots of first generation Korean immigrants who own businesses that run on cash. Cash that they tend to keep in their houses. All victims have been Korean and have had the same house plan (one different from ours). So, I thought we had little to worry about, but we had a security system installed anyway.

So, last Tuesday, the Italian and I are at our local grocery store, stocking up for Thanksgiving. He gets a call from an unrecognizable number, picks it up, and finds out the alarm is going off at our house. "Do you want us to call the police?," the Brinks person asks. "Hell, yes." The Italian goes home, and I, with a half-full cart of groceries, elect to finish what I started.

At this point, I'm thinking, "great, we're going to have a busted door from where the glass is broken, we're not going to be able to get it fixed until after the holiday, what a pain." I'm not real worried about items being stolen, because we don't have cash or guns in the house, and my two pieces of good jewelry were on me. Besides a few cats and a TV set too large to get out of the house without attracting much attention, these guys were getting a big "0" out of us. Our cash is in the bank, know what I mean?

So, ten minutes later I call the Italian. "What happened?," I asked. He said he didn't know, but the alarm was going off and the front door appeared to be unlocked. He didn't remember unlocking it, but he could have. Still, it doesn't explain how the alarm got set off. So, the cop arrives, pulls his gun and goes through our house. Very dramatic "Cops" material.

With a big shrug and thanks, the Italian bids the cop adieu and comes to get me at the grocery store. Now, in the meantime, I've been calling my mom repeatedly on her cell and home phone, trying to see if she'd been by our house. "That's crazy," you're probably thinking, "what mom would do that?" What mom indeed.

We've got boundary issues with my mom. She refuses to call before she stops by, and will let herself into our house on occasion. She has an emergency key, but she uses our house like an extension of hers. It's lovely, really.

So, finally, about an hour after we received the call that our alarm was going off, I got my mom on her home phone. Wasting no time, I cut to the chase: "Mom, have you been to our house tonight?" Pause, followed by a little voice that says "Yeeeessss..."

Turns out she set of our alarm when she tried to open our front door to let herself in (why, I don't know). Then, upon hearing the alarm, she bolted. She didn't call us to say "whoops," didn't stick around to see if the cops would come, she just left. Actually, she went to the Bank and the grocery store, and then failed to answer her cell phone when we called repeatedly.

Some people have wonderful relationships with their mothers. Me? I have a mom-burglar.