The title of this story should be qualified.
"I miss my bike (sorta)."
It isn't my bike. This is part of the reason why I feel obligated to miss it. Before I came to college, it was given to me for usage by my friend Linda from back home. She's an awesome person who knows what a college student really needs for survival in the real world. She has given me so much and entertained me lavishly with her sarcastic wit, and now I've gone and gotten her old bicycle stolen.
Here's the story:
I am an officer for my school's philosophy club. (A pretty fun gig if you ask me.) Our publicity campaign is known for being one of the best and most engaging on our small campus; John, the president, and I find pertinent (and often humorous) quotes to the week's topic of discussion, and put them up on fliers around campus. The topic of the week was still undecided when my fellow officer and I took two seats in the computer lab in order to design the week's propaganda.
"What should we talk about this week?" John asked me.
Since I had been reading Jorge Luis Borges (on recommendation from a friend) earlier in the day, the literature striking me with its erudite style and philosophical intrigues, I suggested that we talk about philosophical literature.
The school's famously fallible internet connection was down, unsurprisingly, at that point, so in order to find quotes without our usual electronic medium, I ran back to my room to get some philosophical books. I grabbed five or six variously-sized tomes, but had neglected to strap on my backpack before making a mad dash to my room. In order to spend as little time as possible on the fliers and to hasten my return to the lab so we could get the hell out of there, I hopped onto my bike while balancing the books on one knee and rode the flat distance back to the building where my cohort waited patiently for my return. The bike was parked in the bike rack and forgotten (...and unlocked).
I find it useful to mention two things in connection with this story.
The first is that I had left my bicycle before, unlocked, for several days (and in one remarkable instance, for an entire week) in other, higher-traffic areas of campus, without incident. I suppose I would have noticed if the bike had gone missing before, eh? Worry grabbed me one weekend and I began using Linda's trusty bike lock, but had forgotten it on my bureau that fateful, philosophical night.
The second is that I had misplaced the bike before. On the weekend before my school's fall break, I left it in front of the campus center; I was in the habit of riding the bike to the center on the odd days of the week when I had an academic class inside the gymnasium building (an unusual situation at my school) and then another class on the other side of campus immediately afterwards. Ten minutes between classes allows students the time to rush from place to place in a short-breathed hurry and apologize on the days when class runs over a few minutes, which happens more frequently than is pleasant. Well, the day before fall break, I wasn't able to find my bike in the bike room where I usually store it. I was worried until I saw it outside the campus center, where it had been for that famous week of time.
I made the mistake of telling a particular friend about my forgetfulness. Michael laughed at me for a long time after I told him the story. As they say on Monty Python, "So much for pathos"
After that incident, I felt like my bike was invincible, or at least that it couldn't be stolen. The campus' "honor code" kept student larceny to a minimum, and the safety officers gave me a feeling of security within the confines of the college's gated hundred acres. The campus is a soft, green spot in the middle of the pulsating, dirty city of Memphis, and in comparison to the neighborhoods just a few blocks over, it is virtually crime-free.
However, the next night which I worked at my job closing the computer lab, the following Thursday, I noticed that my bicycle wasn't where I had left it on Monday evening. Since it was 2am I didn't think too much about it. On Friday afternoon, though, in the brightness of the afternoon sun and eight hours sleep, I saw that the bike was truly gone. I searched the campus (all bike racks and bike rooms) for it--fruitlessly.
Instead of being panicked, I was simply annoyed--at myself, at the thieves, and at the campus safety officers whom I knew couldn't help me. If only I had thought to lock up my bike! If only the thief hadn't chosen to look on that particular rack between Monday and Thursday for a bicycle without a lock. And if only the valiant security officers could do more than write a report, shake their heads, say "Be sure to lock up next time," and feel sorry for me.
I say this not because I'm bitter, but because it's true. The very first night of freshman year, one of my two roommates came in tipsy from a party and left the door to our room unlocked. Sometime in the course of the night, an unidentified person came in and used the bathroom on my other roommate's bed. Since we didn't see the offender, the officials to whom we gave our report couldn't do anything about finding the offender. Perhaps if the officers had questioned the first roommate about who she gave our room number to at the party she attended, they might have gotten several good leads--or pounded on doors to interrupt awkward after-shacking glances between hung-over parties of opposite sexes in boy dorms not too far away. Campus safety said to us after doing all they could, "Well, next time be sure to lock your door." I was almost offended that they couldn't do anything--but then I found out that this occurrence (the mistaking of a student's bed for a bathroom) wasn't all that uncommon, as strange as that may seem.
I remember that one of my other friends had her bike stolen last year. She didn't get hers back either, and she probably took better precautions, as a general rule than I; probably submitted a report to the security office; probably felt really bad about losing her bike. I am annoyed, but I'm not hurt. I can do without a bicycle. I just have this helmet in my room that's rather useless to me now. And if it weren't for the fact that the bike was a loaner from someone who gave it out of charity, I wouldn't think anything about forgetting the entire issue.
I think I'll pay Linda for the value of the bicycle the next time I see her. If I ever get a bike again, I'll certainly lock it up better, I suppose. But I accept the responsibility; I was rather silly to leave it unlocked. And Michael didn't believe me at first when I tried to give him my semi-sob, semi-philosophical story about the missing bicycle; he said, "Haven't I heard this one before?" At that remark I decided to shut up with the "please feel sorry for me" lecture about my loss and face the fact that I almost don't care. Now that I've made my final decision to repay Linda, I think I'll let the theft slide and chalk it up to experience.
And to quote Monty Python once again, "I think there's a lesson there for all of us."