You’ve got to pity the poor burglar, these days.
Once upon a time, there were thriving businesses on every street, and big office buildings full of people — lots of chances to take wallets, or purses, or grab whole stores-full of merchandise.
Now all of those buildings are empty.
As for stealing from people’s homes … now, everybody is inside them, 24/7!
It’s quite the dilemma for today’s career burglar. As everybody knows.
Everybody, that is, except for old Ripoff Van Winkle — a distant and felonious cousin of Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep in the Catskills and missed the American Revolution, according to the story by Washington Irving.
Ripoff — or Rip, for short — slept all through 2020, missing all the recent changes, when he woke up and stumbled out of his bat-free cave into the harsh world of 2021.
Rip rubbed the sleep from his eyes, blinked in the sun, and made his way to the nearest mansion.
He was still creeping up the front yard when the owner called a cheery “Hello there!” and popped out to greet him.
“I beg your pardon?” said Rip, not quite sure what was happening.
“I’ve been watching our Ring doorbell so I’m just wondering, Are you our Amazon delivery person? Or UPS?”
Rip mumbled, “Um, yeah,” while scratching his rather long beard.
“Well, no matter,” continued the cheery home-owner. “Just drop your delivery around the back door, please … near the table with all the cookies. And please take some, as our thank you for being an essential worker!” With that, the homeowner popped back inside and locked the door.
Rip shuffled around to the back of the house, grabbing a sleeve of Oreos before turning away.
The problem, he concluded, was he’d been aiming too high. What he needed was a nice, middle class neighborhood.
He found a house that looked promising — mostly because some snowdrifts had obscured all the signs for the alarm company — and wriggled himself in through a bathroom window.
He fell straight into a bathtub.
“Ouch,” he thought. But then he realized he wasn’t actually hurt at all, because instead of falling into a tub, he’d fallen onto a giant stash of toilet paper rolls.
Struggling to his feet, he knocked over a row of empty liquid soap dispensers, which hit the floor with a racket and rolled around there, tripping him and sending him back into the tub. “What the heck?” he exclaimed out loud, not noticing that the homeowner had just arrived, armed with a baseball bat. “And what’s the deal with all the toilet paper?”
The homeowner and Rip stared at each other for a moment, mutually incredulous. Finally, the homeowner said, “It’s the pandemic, you know.”
“A pan-what?” blurted Rip.
“The pandemic! Have you been living in a cave, or something?”
“Actually yes, is it that obvious?” asked Rip.
So the homeowner enlightened Rip about the pandemic, and toilet paper shortages, and everything else Rip had missed during his nap. The homeowner had been alone for a year, and missed his friends terribly, so he kept on talking and following as Rip wandered around the house, looking for something to steal.
The closest Rip came, however, was soup cans… in the kitchen… on the bookshelves…in the hall closet.
“It’s really none of my business,” said Rip, “but don’t you want room for coats, in there?”
“Why? I’m not going anywhere,” replied the homeowner. “Until I can get a vaccine, what’s the point?”
“And what’s with the wall of books, across your office, behind your desk chair? Was that just to make room in the bookcase for more soup cans?”
“No — that’s because I needed a nicer background, for my Zoom appointments.”
“Your Zoom appointments? Whatever are you talking about?”
“Oh! Let me explain. Zoom, you see, is this great new technology — it’s a little annoying, but also the only way I could talk to anybody. Before you came into my life, that is. I’m so glad you’re here! Would you like some soup?”
“Um, no thanks,” said Rip, looking around for the door. “I’m going to go, now.”
“Then you’ll be wanting one of these,” said the homeowner, handing Rip a surgical mask.
“Why?”
“Don’t ask. Just put it on. Like this,” and the homeowner put one on, too. “You might need to trim that beard a little, first.”
“Thanks, and good luck!” yelled Rip, over his shoulder, running out the door and into the snow.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the good life… in the cave!”
