Tim Conibear: Crime sucks
Crime makes us lose faith in each other but compassion goes further than contempt and we can do more together than going it alone. Tim Conibear gets philosophical in nothing but a t-shirt and a towel.
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Crime sucks. Unless that is you’re a criminal. In which case you’re just another coward. Being a victim of crime is even worse. Debilitating, humiliating (when you’re left on the roadside with nothing but a towel and damp wetsuit) and mind numbingly infuriating as you trace back through all the variables that put you in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Here’s my story. I arrive at the beach on a Saturday evening, the day after my birthday. The waves are small and perfect, the sun is low and the white sand sparkles iridescent, in the early evening light. It’s pretty as a picture so I pull up, call a friend, sling on a suit and run down. I put the key in my wetsuit pocket, chuck my clothes in the back and hide the immobiliser and house keys under the mat in the boot. There are loads of cars about but I leaned you can’t be too careful a few years back. The surf is fun; it’s a weekend so there are lots of characters out like a cool crew of dads with their young kids. It’s fun and free and we surf with smiles. Then I catch a long wave and the paddle back out looks far, so I go in.
I walk back to my car and pass one of the dads. He gives me a smile and hello, I smile back. He has a familiar English accent that makes me briefly think of home. I open the boot, grab a towel, slide my board in and dry off. But the bonnet’s off the latch and looks a bit askew. And the driver door’s unlocked. Did I unlock it? Can’t remember. The glove box is open, that’s strange. And where are my trousers? Takes a few seconds, check and recheck. Trousers are gone, and with them wallet, phone, credit cards. And the things in the boot; house keys, gate keys, immobiliser. And my iPod. My precious iPod, with my deliberately obscure and obsessively manicured record collection, gone with no backup. And my Jacket. My favourite Jacket, my one and only brush with fashion, gone. I didn’t even need it today, it’s a balmy winter’s afternoon and everyone’s wearing shorts.
OK, think.
Breath.
Cards, whatever, take ‘em, they’re all maxed out anyway. And the phone, it’s a nuisance and falling to pieces. But my Jacket and iPod. They were mine, me.
And then the reality kicks in. The immobiliser was on those keys. I can’t drive; I’m stuck here. And even if I could, my house keys are gone so I can’t get into my home, no spares. It’s late and a weekend so no landlord, and my phone with her number is gone so I can’t even call from a borrowed cell. I have no trousers. I am stuck in a t-shirt and towel and it’s getting dark. Laugh or cry? Laugh first, cry later.
So I walk back to the father, with a smile. His name is James. He’s from the UK but now lives in Hout Bay with his two young kids, both of whom surf far too well, and he helps me out for which I will be forever grateful. That was Saturday night, now it’s Sunday and I am home at last; cards cancelled, car towed to garage, house re-opened and in mourning for the iPod and Jacket. South African radio sucks, like salt in a sour wound. It’s been a while since I was on the receiving end of crime and it’s been a lesson.
Like it or not we need each other. Be it a friend or a total stranger, at some point we will need each other’s help. Without the kindness and generosity of James and his family, I would have been sleeping in my car that night, far from home and very much at risk. To James I was a total stranger. In the water, as pathetic as it sounds, James was another surfer; competition amidst the crowd and, as is the norm at most surfing beaches, we hardly even interacted. Yet as we drove from the beach to his house, where he poured me a glass of wine, leant me his cell phone to call the UK to cancel my cards and drove me the 20 minutes back home, I found we shared a lot in common. It seems so sad we don’t interact more with one and other and instead choose the path of least resistance, because, for the most part, we want the same things.
And the second lesson: crime has a terrible habit of polarising opinion. Victims of crime often become embittered and resentful towards the perpetrator and, in a country with a history as divisive as South Africa, this can only be a dangerous thing. But every country has its minorities, fundamentalists and fanatics and South Africa is by no means a unique example here.
Just after James drops me at home I walk to a pay phone to make a quick call to a friend. We talk for a while on the petty change I have left in my pocket before I walk back. As I near my front door a dishevelled looking man in a torn overcoat approaches me. I’m unusually concerned. He’s an older looking man and I’ve no need to be worried, but I still bow my head, doing my best to ignore him. As we pass I lift my gaze and our eyes meet briefly. He says nothing, merely fixes me with a soft smile and walks by. He asks for nothing, and nothing about his body language insinuates that he’s after anything; it’s a genuine smile. I walk on, stop, consider for a second, then turn and give him my last 5 bucks. He’s surprised and thanks me. I could have easily lumped him in with the same thieves who broke into my car and stole my possession leaving me here on the street. But then where’s the logic in that? That’s not how it works.
No matter who you are and how much you like to think you can rely on yourself, you will one day need someone’s assistance. One day you will be alone and you will need help from the person you least expect. And in that measure we are all equal. I think back to my years at Uni studying French philosophy (every bit is dull as it sounds), reading about how we see our failures and insecurities in others and that in them we find only weakness; alone we are strong and free. It’s a load of rubbish.
Alone you become isolated, bitter and jaded. We are good people, for the most part, and by acting together we can do more than going it alone. Compassion can go further than contempt, and empathy further than arrogance. It’s not all about an altruistic trip or a drive for selflessness, it’s about treating others as you’d like to be treated yourself and having the balls to show restraint and common sense when you get burned. It’s just common sense in an age where we’ve been over run by histrionic and reactionary media, an age where we’re loosing a grip on perspective.
Crime’s always been there. And it sucks, it always has. But the good outnumber the bad and together we’ll be stronger, if we’d only just pull together more often.
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Crime sucks (text) by Tim Conibear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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