People Suck

I actually do not believe that, not even on the rare occasions when I say it.

But sometimes I do just have to say it.

People do disappoint me sometimes though.

I have recently been writing about how paranoid I get about my daughter's well-being, about the overall goodness of people, and about my need to control everything.

Life slapped me in the face with a big wake up call today.

My bike was stolen from the BART station.

My daughter came down with a cold a few days ago, and I seem to have picked it up from her (thanks, baby).  I was thinking I would wait for my brother to come home from work with his truck so I could drive to work.  I had woken up this morning with an aching sore throat and a runny nose before sending him a text message about using his car.  And I know that he was trying to make it happen, but I started feeling better, packed up my backpack, and headed off to work on my bike anyway.  I figured I could use the exercise and the fresh air.

My night at work was great.  I had a few in depth conversation about how I believe people are inherently good, that when someone is down, most people reach out to help.  In the bigger picture of life I have been helped out in small and large ways throughout my life, and I try to do the same.  I think most people are like that.  I even think that people we think of as "bad" have goodness in them that has just been buried deep and needs to be dug out.  Now, this generalization is not all encompassing.  Obviously truly evil people (like those who talk in the movie theater) are excepted from this inherent goodness brush I'm painting with.

So there I am, riding high on people's goodness, my coworker and I chatting about language acquisition and Christmas traditions as she drives me to the BART station.  I get out of her car, "see you tomorrow!  Thanks!"  I head over to the bike parking station... and nothing.  No bike.  No lock.  No trace of my bike ever even having been there.

I am, at first, dazed.  I know in the back of my head that my train will be arriving shortly.  I ticket myself back out of the BART station (the turnstile charged my ticket five dollars!) and notify the attending agent that my bike has been stolen.

"Huh, okay, you want me to call the BART police out to file a report?"

Thanks for the sympathy, man.

"No.  I have to catch my train."

"Okay," he says, handing me a brochure.  "They take the reports over the phone, too."

Great.

I head up to the platform call my husband and share this moment of trauma.

"Huh, that sucks," he responds, in a distracted voice.  "Do you want me to come get you?"

Really?!

I've been violated!  Someone stole from me!  It was your freaking bike Carlos!

These are all the things that go through my head, but instead I just say, "no, thanks.  I'll take a cab."

It is strange.  At this point, I am not feeling angry, or offended.  I'm sad.  I'm sad that someone was able to take something from me that I thought I had carefully protected, inside, in a safe place, with a big fat U lock.  I'm sad that no one seems to be surprised or moved by this major event that has just occurred.

It didn't ruin my day.  Sure, the bike cost over three hundred dollars, but in the grand scheme of things, it's three hundred dollars.  I have two other bikes at my disposal.  I know my brother and husband will help me with transportation when I need it.  The things that run through my head after all of this are not about revenge, or even recovery, they are about how healthy my daughter is, even with a cold.  I think of how fortunate I am to have people who love me.  I feel pure joy at the fact that I am not desperate.  I am a bike commuter by choice.  I am not without resources.  Even if I lost two more bikes in two more days, I could go out and buy another bike if I needed to (not a three hundred dollar one, of course).  I can still get to work.  I am still able bodied (and minded).  My mind does not linger on the thing I have lost, but how it does not even register on the scale against what I actually have.  

Then, I arrive at my hometown BART station, and there are no cabs outside.  I call the cab company to come get me:

"50 to 55 minutes," reports the dispatcher.

"What!?" I cannot disguise the shock and dismay in my voice.  "Forget it."

So, I call my husband again.

"Yes, I need you to come get me.  I'm going to start walking."

"What!"  He cannot disguise the shock and dismay in his voice.

"It's Castro Valley, on a main street.  I'll be fine.  I'll walk toward you."

So, there I was, walking briskly down the boulevard in 36 degree weather at 10:30 at night.

And the dispatcher from the BART police station calls me back.  I file my report.  He gives me the rundown:  "It's very rare to recover a stolen bike."

No shock there.

While I am on the phone with him, walking down the street, Carlos picks me up, I get in the car, my phone call is winding down, the officer gives me my report number and says, "I'm so sorry this happened to you."

I heard it in his voice.  He genuinely sympathized with me.  That is what I was looking for, something good in someone I did not know.  He felt bad for what I had been through.  People do not suck.

"Thank you," I respond.  I hang up the phone and think about connections, humanity, empathy.

I think about need, sacrifice, perspective.

I reflect on a FaceTime conversation I had had with  my mother earlier in the day, my daughter pulling my large, heavy, hardcover Harry Potter books off of the shelves and letting the spines "crack!" against the floor, only to lift them up to the shelf and go through it all again, "crack!"

"Celaya!  Don't throw mama's books on the ground!" I call to her from across the room, heading over to her with my iPhone in my hand.  "Can you believe this little toddler?  Look what your granddaughter is doing."  I say to my mom.

My mom gives me a look so typical of her, lips pressed together, quite matter of factly, and says, "that's why some people don't have children.  So they can have nice things."

"Ha."  I look back at her, with a look that I know is typical of me, smirking, eyebrows raised.  "I'd rather have no books."  Then watch as my daughter heads over to the christmas balls dangling from the tree branches, too shiny to resist.

And I know I would.  I would rather have no books, no bike, no jewels, no iPhone.  I'll take my healthy baby, my healthy family, over it all, no contest.

As we turn on to our street, Carlos downshifting to pull into our parking lot, he says to me, "Well, honey, obviously somebody needed that bike more than we did."

Yes.  Obviously.