On Tuesday I went to use my camera. It wasn't where I expected. I poked around some, but didn't see it. It seemed odd to me. After work that evening, I looked again. No luck. I couldn't figure out what I did with it. So I tried to remember what I had done with it. I had taken pictures of a belly dancer Saturday morning, and I remember bringing it back home. So where was it? Oh yea, I had also taken it with me when I went to the Supermart to buy some food for dinner later that day. And I stopped in the used book store before Supermart and I remember setting it down by the cash register! I went back to the book store and the owner told me that he didn't remember it and hadn't seen it. I had stopped at the bike shop on the way back from Supermart, but the two guys there (one a photo buff) said I had a bag of books and a bag of groceries with me, but no camera. I called the father of the guy who owns the book store and neither he nor his wife had seen it when they were in. I went back to the book store. His girlfriend was there with him, and he told me again that he hadn't seen it, and that his dad had called to ask him about it. They were both symapthetic about how much it was worth and that it sucked it vanished. He said he would look around outside because maybe someone had taken it from the cash register and he hadn't noticed and thrown it in the dumpster.
As an aside, the guy who runs the shop isn't mentally there. The kind of person who we used to involuntarily castrate and lock up in a mental hospital for his whole life. As you can guess from above, I know his parents. I think it is great that he can have his own business, especially one that really works with his mental disorder. At this point in time I was perfectly willing to believe that he hadn't noticed I left it and someone else had taken it. I wrote off the dumpster comment as random conjecture by a crazy guy. I went to the police and filed a report, and started the work with the insurance company to replace it. I was looking forward to getting a new one, not my old worn out 3 month old camera back. This morning I got a call from his father, and he said that he had pressured his son into admitting he knew where it was. I picked it up, and the son told me that he found it in the dumpster. His mom was there too and she tried to tell me how sorry she was for all this. I'm not entirely sure what he told his parents and what they suspect. But I had my camera, and no obvious damage was visible. All my images were erased though. I was, for the most part happy. When I got home from work I unerased the card, partially to recover the set of Julie doing her bellydance routine at the Farmer's Market, and partially to see what was on there that had to be erased. It wasn't anything suprising, just him and his girlfriend. In bed. He can take pretty good pictures, but she can't. Which is ok, really, since I'm not very interested in seeing him naked. However.... I'm more than a little pissed that she took part in the whole thing because there isn't much I can do without compromising some firmly held beliefs I have about law, justice,and the mentally ill. I really don't want the legal system to pursue him because I don't think he has, or will ever have, a clear understanding of right versus wrong, personal property, or any of the other social institutions that the rest of us have to keep society running. Or, if he does, then he certainly lacks the ability to act rationally on that knowledge. The court only has one tool: a hammer, and a hammer just isn't the right tool for him. But there is no reasonable way to have the law give her a stern talking too (or anything else) but exclude him, and so she gets off. -- -- Schlake This is my gmail account, I can also be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED], if the TCC is working. * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
