Not too long ago I was robbed by gypsies.
In my quiet moments, when I am not imagining how I might fare amidst a zombie Apocalypse or wondering what the color green tastes like, I like to think that I'm savvy enough to recognize and avoid the chicanery of the travelling people. However, through the benefit of hindsight and its corrective lenses, I recognize that my previous run-in with them in Paris years ago left me woefully unprepared for the reality of their low cunning. Then, they operated in feral packs of children, Dickensian in their purpose and numbers but with the added charm of physical deformity thrown in for good measure. My upper-middle class background needed little more than their poverty to make me instinctively recoil from their outstretched hands, but the real charm came from their utter lack of craft. Still new to the con, these children simply walked around, hands out, and went from surly to irate when their gestures were ignored. A darling child of nine stood in front of me disapprovingly, and when I shrugged at her, she shook her hand in exasperation and explained to the stupid American, and I quote, "You know: money!" The scamp.
I am not entirely unconvinced that this was a deliberate effort to lay the groundwork for their American kin this past year. In my defense (says the man who just described ignoring deformed Parisian orphans - in front of Notre Dame, no less!), they didn't exactly roll up in a garishly painted wagon and dance with swirling skirt and laughing mustache as a monkey, seemingly to the music of a merry organ grinder, nimbly picked my pocket. Still, I should have seen this coming; I say this less because of some abstract notion of my Perception skill, but rather that my wife immediately warned me that they were trouble. But I get ahead of myself.
Some time ago the doorbell to our apartment was frantically rung, as if the person on the other side were desperately seeking sanctuary. Two children greeted me as I opened the door, though, asking if we had any recycling they could have. As charming as their precocious smiles were, I only had beer cans to give, so I apologized and closed the door. After another five visits over the course of the next week, I gave them the beer cans. Rather than appeasing them, however, the young male started to return with greater frequency. His name was Sonny, almost certainly an alias I realize now, and he liked to arrive and ask for handouts. "Can I have the computer monitor in your garage? Will you let me wash this shirt at your house? Do you have an Xbox?" This last query caught me off guard, and I stupidly answered in the affirmative. From then on, he started asking to borrow games, and for reasons I may never fully comprehend, I finally lent him one I no longer play just to get rid of him. He literally lived fifty yards away, so I saw little harm in the gesture.
Long story short, my far more perceptive wife gradually started pointing out the unsettling signs that surrounded this family, as one gradually leads a former cultist of Creationist, I imagine, back into the harsh daylight of the real world. First, she insisted there was something insidious about the fact that the women of the family only ever wore skirts, but my fashion acumen is such that this made no impact. However there did seem to be about fifteen to twenty people living in their apartment at various times, which I think exceeded limits set by the management. Another afternoon, in broad daylight let me remind you, we saw the patriarch breaking into the electrical hub for our portion of the apartment and attach some sort of rig that ran its wires back into their home. Finally, they always seemed to be driving different cars, swapping them with a regularity that made their only constant vehicle, a dilapidated Cadillac that would almost definitely give you tetanus if you sat in the back seat, stand out all the more. Finally coming around to the idea that loaning this child my belongings, while a grand gesture of truly living the Gospel (John 15:27 - "And thou shalt lend thy games, And thou shalt play thy Rockband, And thou shalt please thy Lord"), was not wise. It was about that time they were evicted from the complex and disappeared forever.
So, all told, I'm down a game and a controller, but more importantly, I will never trust a child again. Sure, when he returned the first game and asked to borrow another instead, when I looked at the videogame case that appeared to have been vigorously mauled by a feral badger and, inquiring about its condition, was told "My little sister got it," I perhaps should have become suspicious. But sometimes you must touch the fire to truly learn it burns, so now, as I clutch my charred heart to my chest, I finally see the world without my rose-colored lenses. Now to go email that Nigerian lawyer back about his former client's estate.
