Dear Stupid Little Punks:

I just wanted to write you a quick note and say hi. Just in case you were wondering, I own the Chrysler Town & Country minivan that you stole Thursday night. Congratulations, by the way. You were very quiet and sneaky. I never heard a sound--no breaking glass, no nothing--probably because you didn't break a window, you used a crowbar. We didn't know anything about it until the next morning. I appreciate the fact that you didn't break the window, since my insurance company has been pretty consistent about covering nothing, but you did pry the panel off the door to get it unlocked. Thanks for that.

You don't know much about me, or my family, or the disruption that you've caused, but if you'd looked around a little while you were ransacking the inside of my car looking for things to steal, you might have found some things out, if you'd thought about it. The picture of the smiling little blond boy in the red plaid vest and necktie, the one you left on the floor of the passenger side of the car when you emptied the glove compartment--that's my son. His name is Max. The picture is two years old now, but it was taken at Christmas. You left a big shoeprint on the picture, but you also stole his DVD player. His favorite DVD was in it, by the way--I'm sure you just tossed it on the roadside somewhere after you crashed our car into a fence and ran. It was Sesame Street, by the way. He keeps asking about it.

We bought the car in 2005, right after Max was born. It was the newest car either my husband or I had ever owned, and the nicest one. We paid it off later that year with some money I inherited from my late grandmother. I almost never get into that car without thinking of her. Now I'll almost never get into the car without thinking of you.

My car smells a little like pot smoke now. Yeah, I know what pot smoke smells like. I went to college. My husband spent two hours yesterday at our friends' house, washing it, cleaning it, pulling out the seats, vacuuming--I think he wanted to try to sort out some of the mess that you made throwing everything around the car, but I also think he wanted to clean out some of what was left of you in there. I hope it worked for him--it didn't work so well for me.

We've driven that car to Michigan several times, to Nashville, Tennessee to visit our best friends and my parents, to Massanutten, Virginia this summer to spend a week at my parents' timeshare. We've learned our way around Washington D.C., a city I've always loved and wanted to live in, in this car. I have to say, though, that things are going a little sour for us here, thanks only in part to you. We probably won't explore as much as we have this year again though, since we can't afford to replace the GPS that you stole, and neither my husband nor I are really a particular whiz with directions. That GPS really opened the city up for us. Oh well, though. Nice while it lasted.

I should say thanks, too, to you, for not smashing my car so hard into that fence that the airbag went off. I mean, we can't afford a new car right now, not with my husband starting graduate school this winter, and me just starting a new job, and pregnant--did I mention that? Yeah, pregnant again. I mean, you did smash in the ignition with a screwdriver and a chunk of concrete, and you've obviously done some pretty serious damage to the steering column, since the airbag sensor warning light goes on any time we turn the wheel now, but hey, we don't need a key to drive the car anymore. We do just fine with a flathead screwdriver now--probably what you used too, on your little two-mile joyride before you ditched it. The front-end damage from car vs. fence is pretty minor too, surprisingly--just a little dent in the front driver's side bumper and a little tear in the bumper itself--probably caused when you tried to back it up. Clearly you're quite experienced.

You stole my car charger for my cell phone, but I appreciate the fact that you left my husband's leather jacket. I bought it for him for Christmas the first year that I really felt like we were doing well enough to really buy each other presents. I love how he looks in that jacket--I really thought you'd take it for sure. I guess you wouldn't be able to turn around and sell it too easily though. You also left behind my Ipod dock, which I'm happy about, because it was pretty expensive. Our friend, who was kind and patient enough to drive us around all day on Friday and Saturday, knows about these kinds of things and says that it's the highest-rated dock out there.

So, yeah, it cost about $300 to get it out of impound, because I had to pay for the tow and impound for it--interesting, since I really didn't do anything wrong in this case--and a few bucks to wash the mud off of it--did you drive it through a cow pasture or something, by the way? I have no idea what it'll cost to fix the ignition, but suffice it to say, I can't afford to fix it right now, whatever the cost. And it'll be okay for getting from point A to point B for the time being, but we'd planned to drive to Michigan for Christmas later this month, and I don't think we'll do that. We can't really afford the plane tickets either, and we're a one-car family, so we'll probably stay here this year. It'll be the first year we've stayed since we moved here. I know it'll really disappoint our parents, and I'm not sure how to break it to them yet. Maybe you could tell them if you see them?

To be honest, you probably would have been almost doing us a favor if you'd hit that fence doing 80, instead of the maybe 10 you were actually doing, and totaling the thing out. I mean, then we'd sort of be screwed, what with the car payment and everything, but I wouldn't be driving around in this car that now starts with a screwdriver instead of a key, with the front end damage, that smells like fucked-up, ignorant teenagers, that I'll never look at the same way again. Which is really probably on me, not on you. I'm sure that there are people who could shed this totally violated, completely invaded feeling after someone like you did this to them, but I have to admit that I'm not one of them. Mea culpa.

Thanks,
Molly