Stolen Moments, by Arianna Schioldager

Someone stole my purse.  I saw him sitting by it.  I watched him move my sweater. I watched him carefully fold it as to not sit on it.  I thought he was being polite, despite the deleterious smile that sat smugly on his face. I said nothing.  I was tired, but I was sober.  I was paying attention. But I wasn’t on my toes.  I saw him touch my stuff and I turned my back.  She was asking for it, he probably told his friends.

But I wasn’t.  I was just more interested in watching the wisecracking Julian Casablancas on the stage in my foreground.

The fire marshal had just shut the show down.  It was the perfect distraction. “I hope we still get paid,” Julian fired off.  “Just kidding.” He wasn’t.  Why else would The Strokes play a converted parking garage of the once Robinsons May.  My mother used to drag me here when I was younger.  She’d test out perfumes. I’d idle in the corner, and then we’d browse the back-to-school racks, even though I wore a uniform to school my entire adolescence.

These were my thoughts, as someone ran out the door with my purse.  Childhood memories with mom. It was like watching a car roll slowly through a yellow light, my jetlagged, sedated reaction.  I think my purse is gone, I mouthed to a friend.  I shuffled my feet, moved my folded sweater, and lifted couch cushions to no avail. I turned around in circles, one after the next, an angry ballerina with venom in her toes.  I was on them now. And then. Emptiness.

My mother was held up by gunpoint once for her purse.  She told me how frightening it was, to actually come forehead to barrel.  “It’s nothing like staring down the barrel of a gun,” she said, “It’s like watching the world loose all color, like watching oceans and trees spin off the surface of the planet, and there’s a static noise that rings so loud it promises tinnitus in days to come.”  In other words, staring down the barrel of a gun feels like the end of the world.  It feels like a sickening death.  One you aren’t ready for.

Someone stole her purse at a gas station once too.  She was pumping.  Her driver-side window was down.  He just reached in and snatched.  It only takes a second.  Those were the days when computers didn’t back up phones.  When people carried around address books that held record of decades of friends and family members.  She couldn’t send out a mass email asking for numbers and addresses.  She couldn’t post a note on Facebook.  It was just gone.  Grocery lists, recipes cut out of newspapers, love notes, post-its, dried poppies flattened between pages, and little hand written notes to self, missing.  That bitch was asking for it, the thief probably said to himself.

So my mom gave me all her sage advice.  She told me to always lock my doors at the gas station.  She told me to never carry more than five dollars on my person.  She told me to never carry everything at once.  If you have to bring your keys, put your car key in your pocket, and leave your house keys in the car.   I follow almost all of these rules, lest the one that says, never, ever, under any circumstance, leave your possessions unattended.  She forwards me the emails, the chain mail, the tricks moms think will protect their children.

What she never told me about was the aftermath. What it feels like when someone actually scoops up your life, your identification, your home address, the chap-stick you’ve carried for the last year, and runs off with it.  They didn’t get my keys.  I stashed those in the car like she told me.  They got a phone, a useless ATM card, my driver’s license, my insulin, and my meter.  They came up big.  I didn’t care about any of it.  Not physically at least.  Everything was immediately replaceable.   Expect for what wasn’t.  Notes I’d stashed in the memo part of my phone.  Phone numbers never used, from years prior, the boys I haven’t talked to, and probably now, never will.  Voice notes recorded while driving.  I kept my grandma’s phone number and address in there, though she is long passed.  Photos snapped of my dog as a puppy.  A video from Christmas.   All that stuff.  The same humanity my mom stored in her address book.  Clutter to anyone but its owner. The moments we all sneak and store, gone.  Stolen.