A Letter To The Kid Who Stole My Bike In Front Of 7/11 When I Was 10 Years Old

You mother-fu…

No, I’m not going to start like that. I want to, but I’m not going to start by calling you a bunch of names laced with profanity. Instead I want you to imagine a little relatively brown Mexican boy waking up at 7:30 in the morning every Saturday and Sunday doing his chores early just so he could ride his bike around our neighborhood. You remember it, I’m sure you do; cookie cutter houses, green lawns, picket fences, small dogs barking as you ride by. It was safe, it was comfortable, and it was home. My bike and I went everywhere together for like two years. I was the KING of that small housing tract in Oxnard until YOU came along, you and your sticky fingers, and your urge to take what was not yours.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what you did to me so many years ago. How dare you? I was ten you son-of-a-bitch! There I go again, your mom has little to do with this. Well she has some to do with it; she had you, she raised you, she put you out in this world just so you could break the heart of a little brown boy who probably lived down the street from you. I’d say she has plenty to do with it, but she doesn’t deserve to be called a bitch, so tell her I’m sorry.

Back to you, MY bike, and the crushed heart of a ten year old who did not know the evils of this world. What a great way to find out that there are bad people out there. I went into 7/11 for maybe 5 minutes to buy some candy, Fun-Dips if I remember correctly, and to play a video game. NO, at the time I did not have a Nintendo for you to steal, so I had to save up my quarters from picking up dog shit in the back yard for weeks on end just so I could play a few minutes of Black Tiger. After my two minute game, I turned to leave and OH, MY BIKE IS GONE. Do you have any idea what that feels like? Have you ever had a best friend? Did they get ripped away from you, like a bully would steal Halloween candy from a SOBBING 6 year old? That is nothing compared to the loss I felt that day. I cried more then than when my dog died a few years later. You Bastard!!!

A few years ago, my car was broken into out in front of a bar the night I was going to see Coldplay. I was taking a girl to the concert that night, and I had to ride around with a shattered window on a cold night in San Francisco. And yet, all I could think about was you and how you probably laughed. Laughed all the way home on that bike, laughed with your friends the next day when they asked you where you got it. You probably laughed as you rode it to the Carl’s Jr. across the street from the scene of the crime to get your Western Bacon Cheeseburger, or to Baskin Robbins down the street for some bubble-gum ice cream. Maybe you took it to the park by Blackstock Middle School, or maybe to Centerpoint Mall when you bought the new Metallica tape. That’s what I did, and would have done for years after, except I couldn’t because your GREEDY ASS couldn’t resist being a thieving Jerkface Johnson.

For a long time I wished horrible things upon you. Back then I wished that the fleas of a thousand camels would infest your armpits. Crude as it was, that would have been the nicest of thoughts that went through my mind for you. I never wanted death, because I was a nice boy who knew that would be wrong to wish death on someone. I did however wish that you would bite into a taco from Taco Bell on Saviers Rd. and find half a roach, legs still wiggling, antenna tickling the back of your throat as you swallowed. There was a time I hoped you’d gotten uncontrollable diarrhea in class while you were sitting next to a girl you really liked. Shit juice trickling down your leg. Maybe you’d get pantsed in front of your gym class or get a hard-on in the showers and all the guys would point and laugh.

I don’t know where you are now, and I don’t care. I still think about you, and maybe you are doing poorly. I don’t hope for it, but if you are then that sucks for you and I would not feel sorrow. If you are doing well, then congrats maybe you turned your life around and hopefully you aren’t some thieving punk at some large corporation taking money from the have-nots to pad your numerous bank accounts. I could wish the same distraught feelings you caused me on your offspring; maybe then you would know what it was like for me, having to hear my dad explain how "these things happen" and "its all a part of life." No, I won’t do that, I won’t wish that. My original wish still stands and maybe one day you will wake up to disgustingly smelly itchy pits and a feeling in your stomach that the young kid whom you tormented that one day so many years ago finally got his revenge.

Til then just know that I still think about you and I shall have it one day. One day.