What manner of scoundrel seizes the opportunity to deprive someone of their music? Whoever you are, you also happened to nab my copy of World of Noise by Everclear (the only really good album they've done). Now it's probably a coaster in some cracked out efficiency apartment filled with pilfered hubcaps and small appliances. A beige-carpeted, linoleum-floored marvel of late seventies condominium design, thick with the haze of blunt smoke and wicked laughter. Somewhere in the corner is a pile of stereo equipment and somewhere on the bottom is my CD player. Lost, alone and silent. It's all too horrible to imagine.

Okay, so it is just a car stereo and I must say that I would have been more irate if they had taken my gym bag. But now I'm forced down the road that all victims of theft must walk, replaying all the possible scenarios in my head. How exactly did it happen? Were there any witnesses? Did the stereo suffer or was the worst over quickly?

After extensive on-site examination, I have narrowed the list of possible suspects to three: uno. A career criminal with the speed of a ninja. So fast, and so effecient that if there were any eyewitnesses, they were relegated to double takes and rubbing of the eyes in disbelief. dos. A clumsy, narcotic-crazed drifter who jumped down from the trees, wrenched the radio from the dash with the fury of a savage and took off down the back alleys into oblivion. tres. A kindly old man who promised his wife he'd pick up a new stereo on the way home from work and realized as he was waiting for his bus at the corner that he forgot. Suddenly, the glint of the afternoon sun catches my dashboard and the man has found his salvation. I will just take this person's stereo, he thinks to himself, and I will replace it in the morning. He jots down a quick, but courteous note and places it under my windshield wiper. He tucks the Sony under his arm and scoots back just in time to make the bus. Of course a gust of wind blows the note away and when he returns the next day with a brand new stereo, my car is nowhere to be found.

It makes me leery. It makes me suspicious. It forces me to rush to judgement on people that I really shouldn't. But I know someone took it. It didn't just decide to leave to pursue other options with other drivers and other cars. It couldn't do that. It wouldn't do that. At least, not without leaving a note.