I never lock doors. Not my car, not my house. Now that you know this, I should probably start.
I grew up in what I always considered to be a pretty rural area, not farmland rural but, can’t walk to your friends house, rural. As such, I never really felt the need to lock my doors. After all, for someone to rob the house they would have to drive up a mile long driveway with a truck, load it with shit, and drive off. It’s not like they could just stroll down the street carrying my tv.
Since those days, I have moved quite a few times but the habit never left me. I have gone from rural Pennsylvania to a real life ghetto in West Philadelphia and back. Still never lock doors. What is even more impressive is that the majority of things I have had stolen from me in life were stolen from me by my friends. Ah, the good old inside job right? I’m sure everyone has had one of their friends or family steal something from them at some point right? Locks can’t really prevent that. Speaking of locks, I actually did have ONE thing stolen from me by a stranger, it was my bike, and it WAS locked.
I started thinking about this article the other day. I pulled up to a Wawa, the local convenience store around these parts with all of my windows down, and walked inside with the doors unlocked. I had simply tossed my car keys onto the drivers seat and walked inside. Why do I take the keys out of the ignition just to toss them onto the seat? Habits I suppose.
While I was inside I saw a particularly shady set of characters at the counter, and I immediately thought about what was sitting on my passenger seat…
Its a Brocade Certified Fabric Professional laptop bag, and its contents are:
- MacBook Pro 15.4″ Laptop ($2500)
- IBM ThinkPad T61 Laptop ($2000)
- Palm Treo 750wx Smartphone ($500)
- Blackberry ($400)
- Bluetooth Mouse ($50)
- Jabra Bluetooth Headset ($80)
- 2 AC Adapters for Laptops ($100)
- USB Portable 80gb Hard Drive ($100)
- Misc. Paperwork and other cords
- My Wallet
So that’s approximately $5700 worth of crap in that bag alone, PLUS my wallet. Sitting on my passenger seat, windows down. How easy it would be to steal…
Have I just been lucky my whole life?
This issue is further brought to light by my two new house mates who are, in my opinion, way overly paranoid about locking doors. They lock the doors even when we are inside and awake. It has been tough remembering to lock all the doors before I leave the house, and a little annoying to fumble around for my keys to unlock the doors again when I arrive at home. I wonder though, are they overly paranoid, or am I too trusting?
Even in my last apartment, just behind an unlocked door was a 60″ HDTV, an Xbox 360, and a PS3 just waiting to get snatched up by someone while I was at work.
I suppose it will take having something actually stolen from me by a stranger before I get the sense knocked into my to actually lock things.
On the side of trust issues not dealing with material items, when it comes to people I know, I feel I am quite the opposite. I am more willing to place trust in the hands of a sales dude, or some stranger who is trying to sell me on something then I am to trust people I know and love.
I think I’m just a pretty mixed up dude in general.
So, do you lock your doors?
You could, in fact, walk to your friends houses. and use their swimming pool too.
I have very little to steal, low budget electronics being the most expensive stuff we own, and I lock everything, even when i’m checking the mail. I don’t even like opening the windows (we have a ground-floor apartment).
Then again, I trust no one with anything, ever. I think you’re more of a laid-back dude, it takes a certain level of paranoia to padlock all your shit all the time.
I never used to lock anything. I mean my first car was a 16 year old brown Concord fully equipped with AM radio and no one in my family locked the cars. The house yes, but after 3 robberies, you do that. Doesn’t matter though, because they always get in. You put a deadbolt on and they brake a window and if you live the the country, you really want to have those bars on your windows?
When I lived in a dorm they had auto-locking doors, man I hated them. Go to the bathroom and forget your keys and you have to go to the office and get someone to let you in and all i have back then was a barely functional laptop and a 15″ TV. Now, I have things people might want, but its not like I am going to pay to get a high tech security system in my rental. I’ll lock the door, but if I forget my keys, I crawl in through the window and that cheap little $12 lock on the door from Lowes isn’t going to withstand even a little kick. I never lock my car in the driveway, but Mike does and it upsets me when I go out to get something and have to come back in for the keys again.
So on your question, too trusting, maybe? But is the hassle of becoming truly theft proof really worth it? Eh, that is what renter’s insurance is for. Hmmm… I better get some.