Daylight Robbery

The word ‘thief’, has been redefined. When I was growing up, Thief stalked the night by breaking into homes, cars and offices and making off with whatever he thought was of value to him. And if you dared take him on, there was a good chance of being roughed up or being killed.

Today however, there is a new kind of thief out on the prowl. This new breed of thief does not wait till the dead of the night before breaking into houses with metal bars and carting away your hard earned households. And he won’t stick you up as you wait in the car at the traffic lights or in a traffic jam. He does it as you watch and with seemingly no effort at all. I am into fountain pens and this is what happened last Thursday as I was making some notes.

Thief: “Eh TB, you have a nice pen, what make is it?”

TB: “It’s a Parker 45 and writes well. I think it’s one of the best fountain pens in the Parker range.”

Thief: “Hmm, am I not going to take it? You can always get another one.”

I didn’t think much about it and once I was done with the notes, I tucked Parker 45 into the breast pocked on my shirt and poured myself another drink. We talked for a while and when he got up to go, he lent forward, reached over the table and extracted Parker 45 from my pocket while muttering the words: “I almost forgot my pen.”

I thought it was a joke. It wasn’t. And just like that, he ambled over to his ride with not a care in the world and was gone leaving me bewildered. I let it slide.

James was robbed of 5k airtime when Woman Friend simply picked up his airtime and loaded it onto her phone because, ‘he had enough to spare.’

Waitress had brought James 20k worth of airtime but seeing the shop didn’t have a 20k card, she returned with four cards in 5k denominations. As he loaded the first of the cards, nonchalantly Woman Friend said: “Eh, James but you, how can you load all that airtime when I have none? I had better load otherwise there will be nothing left for me.” With that, she picked up a card, scratched off the foil and started loading. And the beauty about it all, ‘thank you’ was not a word she offered once she’d loaded nor did she think she had done anything wrong.

The real winner though, is a chap called Andy who is my tight – no sorry, WAS my tight. I was meeting up with the boys and fancied some pork spare ribs from the Chinese restaurant across the road. I went to great lengths to turn up late and placed my order after I knew they had eaten so I didn’t have to share the ribs with them.

When the ribs arrived, Andy was also walking in along with Wifey who, he chose to tuck away and in the furthest corner of the bar. No sooner had he joined us, than he reached over and picked one my ribs. Then he picked another. And another. Licking his fingers, he stood up, walked to have a word with Wifey then returned with a side plate.

It was theft of the worst kind. Without asking, he scooped some ribs onto the side plate and went to feed them to Wifey. This calls for a WTF outburst doesn’t it?!

Returning, he picked up another rib then said: “Wifey was doing badly, she hadn’t had lunch!”

Now you know how the new breed thief operates.