Theft.

I've been robbed more than I care to recall. But I should make a list. Here it is.

The first thing I remember having stolen from me was a skateboard when I was about 7 years old. I was amazed someone would just take something that wasn’t theirs.

Flash forward, when I began accumulating things that people would want, and the thefts began accelerating. I was raised to be very honest and trustworthy. No locks on doors, and if there were, they weren’t used. Oh, what a time.

Late 90’s: the landscapers broke into my townhouse and took my stereo equipment and some other stuff, and ate my ice cream on the back porch while I was home. That freaked me out.

Later, someone stole started stealing my clothing. My suede jacket and a Vail pullover in Bluffton, SC and Charleston, SC. I couldn’t believe it. Clothing!

But during the years my dad dumped all his responsibilities on me, and I carried around his mother’s and his marital silver and possessions for decades. I paid to store it, bubble-wrapped it, and carefully moved it around about 20 locations for him. Much was broken and lost during that time.

I saw sterling silver crystal bowls crash before my eyes. It was awful. But the worst was yet to come.

After my wife left, she left me with everything. Except our daughter and money. So I had a 4 massive BR house full of items to do something with, and no money or options. Thanks. That’s what it REALLY declined.

I began selling and abandoning the larger and more expensive items. But that left a ton. So I sold more and more and gave a lot away to people that needed it. I still had a ton of family things and valuables.

I was about to move to a smaller house and asked my Ex-wife to help. She agreed which was a Red flag I ignored.

She arrived one rainy day with three of her “friends” to help load a giant truck I rented to put everything into storage. I was grateful. And an idiot.

During the move, she advised me that her friends “might steal some things from me, " which they did—a lot.

They took my parents’ marital silver settings, electronics, garden benches, clocks, decorations and God knows what else. My ex-wife tried to steal some photographic cutouts of MY mother for some reason, but eventually gave them back. That was ridiculous.

Then, at the next place, I had someone break into the gararge and take all my tools, hardware, and everything I had been carefully accumulating since childhood. Engineering and machinists tools, nuts and bolts and an impressive shop’s worth of things. If you run a shop, you know how devastating that is.

I carried insurance, but it proved to be a total waste. Dragging feet, the police are no help, the adjuster doesn’t believe anything, major depreciation on everything no matter what, etc… It’s barely helpful. Still, the worst is yet to come.

So, I moved to a smaller apartment and put my most valuable sacred things into two storage units. U-Haul! A name brand! What I did was create an organized honeypot of my life’s most valuable things sitting there for thieves to take, which they did.

Someone broke the lock and hauled out everything. About $50,000 worth of valuables, but mostly, the sentimental things I had been protecting to give my daughter. Hand-carved furniture, rare instruments, high-grade electronics, 3-D printers, broken frames and paintings, and things destroyed— it was a true disaster. I filed a claim and the insurance company denied any lability. And the next week, the owner put up about $100k worth of security devices around the storage property. The small claims threshold in KY is $2500, which is a joke. The lowest in the country.