Another Crazy Laptop Story For Your Enjoyment

I know I always post personal, crazy stories but there’s no news and this one is just so entertaining! :p You don’t have to read it of course… maybe if you’re bored you’ll want to?

So as some of you may remember, my laptop was stolen on Christmas Eve at Fry’s Electronics. The cops went through the security tapes to see who stole it, but the cameras conveniently shut off right where it was probably taken. I started to use my ancient, in-multiple-pieces laptop as a substitute, but it was a real hassle to take to class and extremely slow. Luckily, my youngest brother is now letting me use the brand new laptop he got for Christmas, and so I’ve been updating the site with it for the past week. Thank goodness he’s letting me keep it for now since I wouldn’t be able to make all those large news stories or do any homework in a reasonable amount of time.

My aunt, who is blind, broke her hearing aids last week so I went to her house today to help her with the new ones. While I was there, I knew Pokemon Sunday would be revealing the mysterious question mark from last week, so I walked around the neighborhood looking for a free Wi-Fi signal to update the site. I found one at the local high school, and though I knew PokeSun was probably just revealing Pokemon Ranger: Tracks of Light (which is what it turned out to be… they showed the main characters and Ukulele Pichu), I still wanted to make sure there weren’t any surprises. So I sat on the street corner for a half-hour, waiting for news to come. My brother repeatedly ran down the street to get the laptop from me (“someone’s going to steal my laptop!”), but I kept pushing him away and telling him nothing’s going to happen. He kept grabbing it from me and we fought for a few minutes (he was being a brat all day long – even my mom was mad at him – honest! :p), but I eventually figured out how to hold it down without breaking it. He finally gave up and walked back to my aunt’s house.

Less than three minutes after he was out of sight, an adult pulled up next to me on his bike and asked if I was able to get an Internet signal. I told him yes, thinking he was looking for a signal too (he must want to update his site too, naive me thought :p). While still on his bike, he leaned down toward me and asked if he could use the laptop, reaching for it simultaneously. That’s when I knew something was up, so I pretended like I didn’t see him do it and remained calm, telling him I was busy with something and could not accommodate him. Since I was calm and staring at the screen, he figured I hadn’t seen him, so he told me he wanted to show me something funny on the Internet in a second attempt to get me to hand it over. “It really is funny, you should see it!” Again, I said I’m busy and not interested, but he continued to hunch his body toward it.

He took the plunge and grabbed the laptop with both hands! Still remaining calm, I asked in an annoyed but polite voice, as if this was no big deal, “Do you mind?!!” He was actually grabbing it rather violently and pushing me, but I was able to keep it down as I had done so a few minutes earlier with my brother. I kept thinking to myself, “I’m not losing two laptops in one month, dang it!” I still acted like this was no big deal even though I was clearly being mugged. In a flash, his face turned completely furious. His entire demeanor changed. This is when I got a little scared. He turned his head to look around… as if he was about to do something. Just as quickly, he unzipped his jacket and reached for something in one of the pockets. He held his fingers in a way that I thought it might be a knife. Before he could get his fingers in the pocket, I jumped up and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Would you please leave me alone!!” He obviously wasn’t expecting me to yell that loud (I’ve had a lifetime of practice with my brothers), and just like that, he took off like a Zubat out of the Reverse World – so fast that I barely remember him leaving.

I walked up the street slowly and kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he didn’t see where I was going even though he had gone down another street. I walked in to my aunt’s house and said I was almost mugged, but my brother and dad just laughed, thinking I was kidding since I was acting too calm and because my brother had just warned me that would happen (that little brat – how dare he be right about something!). They realized I wasn’t faking it when I walked straight to the phone and dialed 9-1-1. After a few cops came to the house, we learned that a man on a bike has been robbing people with a knife for the past few weeks, though they wouldn’t tell us if anyone had actually been stabbed (this was on the outskirts of L.A., by the way). If this was a Pokemon episode, my Pidgeotto would find him, Pikachu would shock him, Officer Jenny would arrest him, and we’d find out he is part of the same evil syndicate that stole my laptop a month earlier! But alas, to this moment, they still have not found him. I was also a bad witness and could not remember what he looked like since I was looking at my laptop most of the time and because it happened so fast, so he probably won’t be found. :(

Lesson #1! If you’re getting mugged, yell loud to draw attention to yourself and the bad guy! Lesson #2: Remain calm! Lesson #3: Don’t act stupid like me and put yourself into a situation like this in the first place! I was an idiot to advertise the laptop on the street. Lesson #4: Probably give them what they want in the first place? In this case, I didn’t have to since the guy was kind of chubby and he put his bike wheel right next to me, so even if he had pulled out a knife or gun, all I had to do was kick him and his bike over… but that’s probably not always the case.