Open Door Policy

My parents have always been the type to leave a door open. They’re pretty trusting people but I think it’s probably as much about their own forgetful nature and a desire to get in just in case they can’t find their own keys. I honestly haven’t had a key to their house since I was a teenager, but I regularly ‘break-in’ through their usually open side door.

I don’t feel bad revealing all of this to the general Internet public, because as of last Friday, their open-door era has passed. Friday my parents were burgled.

It really wasn’t that bad, as far as robberies go. The got some of my mother’s jewelry (though not most of it, and not most of her favorite pieces), their digital camera and a bunch of my dad’s loose change that he’s been saving in a jar in the kitchen. Oh and they took my siblings and my baby teeth that my mother had been saving in her jewelry box (who saves someone else’s teeth for 20 years? EW, Mom). It could have been much worse. They apparently didn’t even see my parents’ Ipods and there wasn’t any paper cash in the house at all.

I stopped by to bring them dinner while they waited for the fingerprint technician and they showed me what the police thought was the path of the people who had been in their house. It was really unsettling to see all of the drawers and cupboards in the house slightly open and disturbed, like these people didn’t even have the decency to close the drawer after they rifled through it.

This little incident was a wake-up call for not only my parents, but for us as well. We generally keep our doors locked, but I know I could be more careful about it than I am. We have always thought that Dobson Ranch was such a calm, family-oriented area that we didn’t need to worry about someone breaking into our house. This was a foolish notion. If you have things in your home you want to keep, lock your doors. Make sure your windows don’t have faulty locks and if they do, put dowels in them. No one is immune to this kind of thing.