“Under California State Law we actually can’t kill them if they enter our house! This is bullshit! The original 13 colonies would never let this happen! Even Jersey! What kind of hippie, avocado eating, vegan-diet, responsibly raised state is this!”

A few days ago someone, probably a piece of shit, broke into our landlords house stealing all of their credit cards, iPads, money and licenses. This is particularly scary because if you know where our landlords live, you know where we live...directly behind them.

I was getting out of work earlier this week checked my phone to see if I had any missed calls. I expected to see the usual 2-3 iMessages or social media updates I would have missed. Turning on my phone I had 32 missed calls and 47 texts from Jamie as a sudden sweat of fear came over me. This is not okay. Nobody wants to get out of work to notice that the people they love might be in trouble. I jumped on my bike and pedaled my ass off to get home as fast as I could. Jamie was safe and immediately filled me in on what was going on. Our landlords, who we consider good friends, had packed up their car for a long weekend away and were about to hit the road. Their son had a soccer game and they were going to leave directly from that. When they got back to their car from when the game ended all their luggage was gone. Stolen. This was no more than ten minutes from our house, in broad daylight. Freaking out that they had their licenses and knew they were about leave for a trip we feared the thieves would come to the house to steal even more. Our place is located right behind their house. Would they try to get us? We frantically grabbed any blunt object and started to barricade the doors.

After rationalizing and coming up with a plan we calmed down and started to take precautions. We replaced all the locks and got a MasterLock for our gated yard. We made sure all the neighbors knew what happened and they filed a police report. On a side note, what kind of dickhead steals skateboards from little kids? Seeing how heartbroken and teary-eyed our neighbors kids were because someone stole their skateboards is heartbreaking. After everything died down, locks were changed, police reports completed and calls to creditors to cancel cards they got on their way.

Now we are alone. I know only the worlds dumbest criminal would try to rob the same person twice but you never know. For the rest is of the night I walked around like a prison guard and shaking a baseball bat at any noise in our yard. We made up a contingency plan just in case and hid weapons around our place. The only thing left for us to do was make up a Home Alone booby-trap floor map. I really wish the Stickie Bandits would try to break in.

Nothing happened and things have calmed down. Seriously though, if you break into our house I will do my best to hit you with a bat.

Ever go through a break in?

Does anyone actually know the laws around if someone breaks in and what you can do about it?

-YourFriendMatt