I know. It's my fault. I was in a hurry, I left it sitting there for maybe 10-12 minutes before I ran desperately back. Hell, I probably saw you on my way out. Didn't think twice. Just another woman wandering into the bathroom...me rushed and running, you about to stumble into an opportunity. A phone. Sitting on a windowsill. Just waiting. 10 minutes of just waiting.
Yup. It was my fault. I did something dumb. The ultimate sin in this city full of intellectuals who have all been promised we're smart to the point that we're blue in the face.
And I know it was tempting. In it's pretty shiny pink case. The back shattered beyond recognition and held together with packing tape. But you wouldn't have known about that til you got it home. I like to imagine that you struggled a little. That you thought, for just a second, before taking it. But I know, because you almost immediately turned it off---at least according to android device tracker---that you probably didn't even hesitate. Hell. It's probably not even the first thing you've stolen, and it likely won't be the last. My phone probably just looked like a free fifty pounder. Sitting there. Telling you that (at my expense) you'd just had a very good day.
Being at Cambridge can be hard. Trust me I know. You're surrounded by privilege. People whose families spend more money on one spring vacation than your whole family has ever had in your whole life. Brilliant scientists, adorably obnoxious theorists. Some of these people have never held a job, or even needed to sweat over a grade. Life seems freaking glued to a silver platter for oodles and oodles of them. They could grab that platter and smash it against a wall, and when they wanted to go pick it up again, everything would still be there, untarnished and asking if they'd like a shot of whiskey with that? The layers of intersecting advantages can be intimidating. The people around you aren't just smart--probably as much smarter than you as they are than me--and they come from stable, well-to-do homes whose dysfunction is probably buried pretty deep if it's even there at all. Nothing harsh, and on the surface, making you fight to keep going every day, or asking you to pick up emotional waste to help keep others afloat, no mental illness making sure their families stay forever poor, and forever on edge No latent anger exacerbated by economic condition. They went to good schools, driven by tenacious personalities and supported by people who wanted them to succeed. I get it. Emotionally staring that in the face, and thinking about how hard you worked to be here? Taking something from someone who has (and has had) everything probably didn't seem *that* bad. At least not the first time.
But, given the building I left that phone in for 10 minutes, and who has access to it, I can pretty securely say that no matter how much you think you're different, you too (like me--and I like to think I'm different too, but I'm not) had at least some of that privilege.
I mean, the people who use that bathroom? Grad students, fellows and faculty. Probably why you thought you were nicking something from someone who'd driven onto the downing site in a brand new 2012/2013 impala. 'Cause you know, I bought it as soon as my plane landed, waltzing off that first class direct flight into a fully funded fellowship. Not struggling through economy after 4 transfers because I needed the cheapest flight I could find since it was all coming at the cost of 6+% interest for the rest of my natural life. With all the money I saved up paying off my undergraduate student loans and working a non-profit job that meant I had to work nights to eat, you probably could be forgiven for mistaking the bags under my eyes for really expensive make-up and some new trend. In your mind I take the train from London to Cambridge whenever I come back from vacation, and have taxi-cabs to get my bags to my house. You can't possibly have taken a phone from the kind of person who goes an extra hour on the bus because it's 4 pounds cheaper, or who hauls 3 bags across Parker's Piece, and then across town when they move in. The kind of person who got that phone used off of kind sibling 'cause she couldn't really afford her own. I'm the kind of gal, I'm sure you thought, for whom the several hundred pound expense would be pocket change. Oh boo. The owner of that phone can only go to four May Balls. Not five. If you glanced at my email, you'd have seen that I'm working all those events. Or had you seen my LinkedIn, and Facebook before I managed to change the passwords and remotely lock the phone, it might have come to your attention that while I sit over here reading about how lucky I am, my family back home is literally falling apart, that my job history extends back to age 15, and includes a lot of washing dishes, standing in factory lines and scrubbing walls.
But that shiny pink case. Designed to keep the screen from cracking any more. I'll admit it was attractive. I do hope you make some good cash off that cracked screen, and shattered back. Or at least the case. And I won't lie, I sure as hell hope you need it. That you eat ramen more nights than I do, and that this relieved some horrible financial burden. Maybe you were going to be kicked out of your apartment next week? Or maybe you just really needed a drink.
If it's any consolation, I am American. And I'm blonde. I DO have those going for me, even if getting a new phone is kinda off the table financially. So if you stole the phone to make a social statement, or because you were mad at some elite Cantabrigian, you DID stick one to Uncle Sam by sticking one to a middle class American chick whose older than she wants to admit. Go You.
And if you're really really poor and you have a family member dying somewhere, some part of me is glad I could help.
But if you're just a douche; then fuck you.
Also: enjoy the 40+ photos of Pueget bicycles ranging in age from the 1970's to the mid 1990's. Hope you get a kick out of them.
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