So you’re enjoying a stroll through the Monteith Historic District, presumably between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. (when most normal people are out for a stroll), and you spot the cute little solar lamp I lovingly placed near the newly planted Japanese maple next to our front walk on Saturday afternoon after spending many hours landscaping that spot.  (The same exact cute little solar lamp, in fact, that graced a small planter next to the also newly planted willow tree less than twenty feet away for almost a year, without your notice.)

And you decide you must have it.  You can’t live without it.  You know in your heart that if you could only possess that cute little solar lamp, your wretched, pathetic life will suddenly, somehow, be ever so much better.  Less sad.  Less hopeless.  Maybe it’s a Magical Lamp.  Maybe if you take it home and rub its tiny solar cell, a genie will pop out and grant you three wishes.  Maybe you could wish for three more matching lamps to make a set of four.

I am so angry at you and your inability to admire without taking.  It seems like such an unimportant thing, but that little lamp, along with the planter it originally graced, was a gift from a friend, and it made us happy to look at it every night.  Will it bring you as much joy as it brought us?  Somehow, I doubt it.

Think about how many people have walked by that lamp over the past year and haven’t stolen it.  I, for one, am perfectly capable of walking around our neighborhood and appreciating any number of solar lamps and assorted yard ornaments without making off with any of them.  O, the yearning!  The unimaginable self-control it takes to simply walk by without helping myself!  Yet somehow, I can do it.

Are you the same a*hole who stole the concrete gargoyle statue from our front porch steps in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 2000?  Are you the same a*hole who broke into our garage in Pennsylvania in 2008 and took Loving Husband’s tools and mountain bike?  I’ll bet you are.  I’ll bet you have a yardful somewhere nearby of stolen solar lamps, ornaments, decorative rocks, statuary, potted plants, patio furniture, wind chimes, sprinklers, hoses and bird feeders from other peoples’ yards.  I hope you’re smart enough to keep all those things hidden in your backyard so no one else steals them from you.

I wasted most of my day being mad at you and trying to figure out what possible pleasure you could have gotten from stealing this simple little thing from us.  Loving Husband wants to believe you’re a homeless person who needed it much more than we do.  I think Loving Husband is being naïve, but he’s much better at giving people the benefit of the doubt than I am.