More Things to Worry About

As though I wasn't paranoid enough, last night while listening to a podcast as I was falling asleep and barely listening, there was a story about dozens of apartments in fancy complexes in Dallas getting robbed all at the same time. It turns out that it is relatively simple to pick the locks of most pin-tumbler locks with a method called bumping. Since I was half asleep, the story didn't register until this evening when I started to think about it. It appears to be true, most of the locks on our front doors are very easily bumped and it only costs about $35 to buy a set of bumping keys that work on most locks.

After a round of googling, I'm feeling more secure with my Medeco lock on the front door and the disc-style locks on our bicycles, which are, presumably, immune from bumping (but not from being opened using a Bic pen). The stupid security lock on my car, however, is easily bumped. I pretty much knew that already but I was pretending like it was some kind of deterrent, since I've noticed that most cars parked in my neighborhood have no extra locks at all. I figure theirs should be broken into before mine. So far, so good. It's been at least 10 years since my car has been broken into, the last time they stole my baby car seat and a screwdriver that I had somehow inherited from a college boyfriend.

Since it seems that the period of low crime is receding, I am starting to feel less safe. I feel as though I am seeing more and more homeless people, which does seem to presage a downturn. That could be attributed to my working in the city and out of the oblivion of driving several hours to the outskirts of reality.

The other thing that is leading to my unrest is that every now and then I wake up and find that the front door is unlocked, which really freaks me out, and doesn't seem to phase Marc at all, as he is the one who is neglecting to lock it after Max leaves for school at the crack of dawn, and before I am awake. No lock can overcome human stupidity. So when I am robbed and left for dead, you know how they got in.