A Brief Letter to the Persons Who Stole My Car

Dear Car Thieves,

I like to think you are like Liam Neeson in Taken. You were racing through the streets of my town to rescue your daughter, and you needed a car, and of course, there was mine waiting for you. 

You may take my car, Liam Neeson. 

I like to think you are Ethan Hunt, and for some reason, your spy activities led you to my little town. The bad guys were on the run, and you needed transportation. There was no motorcycle, 2016 Hummer, or Jaguar available, so you lifted my 1997 Honda Accord. You had to, really, because the world was about to perish from a nuclear bomb or contagious disease being released to society. 

You may take my car, Ethan Hunt. 

If you are not Ethan Hunt or Liam Neeson, however, I’m mad at you.  I would first like to sardonically congratulate you on your thievery choice. My 1997 Honda Accord was a stellar decision. It's vintage-- with 230,000 miles. I have some hopes and dreams for you, car thief, because my car is a real classic. 

I hope you want to listen to some music on your way to Denver. I hope you found my auxiliary cord and plugged it into your phone. Isn’t technology amazing? Unfortunately, my auxiliary cord got stuck in the car door one too many times, and so it requires a perfect pinch to get full audio. I know the technique to get it working, but you don’t. I hope you enjoyed your tunes with just the base and eerie echoes of background vocals.

I hope it was really hot the day you stole my car. My 1997 Honda Accord is all electric; a miracle of science! As you were sweating it out in the heat of the car, I’m sure you tried to roll down the window. Please enjoy the one window that actually rolls down. Yep. That’s right. Just ask the kids who I carted around in my car the whole summer. It’s quite warm, so I hope you enjoy the sauna. 

I’m sure you used the air conditioning to compensate for the windows. You will run out of that 1/4 of tank of gas in less than an hour if you do so. You’re welcome.

I hope you enjoy the menagerie of educational supplies I had in my trunk. Please notice how gosh darn organized I am. I had folders of card stock, college-ruled paper, and notes on grammar activities all carefully filed. Be sure to stop at a coffee shop and rifle through my college notebook. There’s a killer paper in there on my educational theory on Project-Based-Learning and my tendencies toward Behaviorism and the Social Learning Theory. It’s a good read. I hope you enjoy them. 

I hope you favored the endless shaking my car produced when you reach 65 miles per hour on the interstate. Apparently, it has something to do with the poor condition of my tires. Word on the mechanical street is that my tires are SO BAD they might even pop if driven on in speeds above 30 miles per hour, but I hope you won’t mind.

I hope you like poetry, because if you don’t there’s about fifteen books in my trunk that will give you a good start of all the famous poets. If you’ve already dabbled in the field of literature, I’d start with Tennyson (he’s my favorite), but if you are a greenhorn, start with Emily Dickinson. She’s the easiest to grasp. If you end this venture with a love of poetry, I won’t even be mad you stole my car.

I hope you sold my driver’s license to some 16 year old girl. And when she used my ID to get into some trendy Denver club, I hope they played a lot of Miley Cyrus, and she rued the day she bought my ID from you. 

In conclusion, Car Thieves, I mean, come on! Why my car? I can’t understand why you thought it was even worth the effort! But whatever. You had your reasons for thievery. 

Maybe you got a tip about those poetry books, and just HAD TO get your hands on them. 

Yeah. That’s it. Darn poetry books.