Scrappy Pete

I recently moved apartments. It seemed like it wasn’t a big deal because I literally was moving across the street. Because it was a tiny move I forced my friends into helping me. I way underestimated the logistics of this, so the whole day was one long, nightmare.

But the best/worst event of the day was when all my stuff got stolen.

To make things more efficient during the move, I took one friend back with me to my old place, loaded the U-Haul, and then dropped stuff off, so my other 3 friends could take it up to my new apartment. After the first load, we went back to my apartment, filled the U-Haul, and went back to my new building.

My friend and I pull up and see the three other movers looking around frantically in the alley.

This couldn’t be good.

After getting out of the truck, they explained that a large pile of my stuff had disappeared.

“We just left it for a second…”

A second was evidently all it took for 90% of all my summer and winter clothes to disappear, along with my trash cans and my other friends gym bag, which included his phone and wallet.

To be fair, it was partially my fault. As we drove away, it briefly went through my head that I should warn my friends that this isn’t quite Lakeview and they need to be sure to watch my stuff, but I figured… it would be taken care of and what are the odds someone would steal a bunch of crap?

Obviously very good.

As a good WASP, I swallowed my rage and told everyone that we should just keep going. We finished the rest of the move with pretty decent efficiency.

Upon completion, we grabbed a drink, then I met up with my friend Troy. The rage that I had swallowed during the afternoon, erupted in a monumental wining session with Troy.

1000s of dollars… I lost 1000s of dollars in clothing. I had no underwear, no socks, no t-shirts, no jeans. Nothing.

My lament went on until my phone rang and I picked up to talk to my friend Lana.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she said.

Right after the stuff disappeared, my friend Mark, who had lost his phone and gym bag, had activated his Find my iPhone app. The feature showed that the stuff was moving around the city and eventually settled near Wilson and Sheridan.

Wilson and Sheridan isn’t a super nice place. Like… there are much worse places in Chicago, but this wasn’t like the thief went to Trump Tower for brunch.

As we drove back to my apartment for the second load, the friend with me got a phone call from the other three who were the stuff when it disappeared.

“They want to go hunt it down,” she said. “They think that we should all drive down to the location and ask for the stuff back.”

I looked at her like she was nuts.

Yes. Our stuff is stolen and we should totally follow it to a shady neighborhood and ask for it back.

“Excuse me sir, you seem to have accidentally stolen some things from me.”

I immediately put the kibosh on this idea and we continued moving stuff.

But one of the things the Find My iPhone app does is put a “Call This Number” screen up. The number Mark put in was for Lana who was on the phone with me:

“You’re not going to believe this. Some kind named Scrappy Pete called and he has all your stuff.”

I later got to hear the message, and it started like this:

Hello, my name is Pete. People call me Scrappy Pete.

Scrappy Pete is, as his name suggests, a scrapper. He goes around to alleys on moving weekends and takes stuff that he thinks is garbage.

My stuff looked like garbage.

Immediately upon going through the stuff he found the phone, called the number, and was calling to return everything.

Lana sped in her car up to my house, picked me up, and we drove the 30 minutes to Evanston to pick up all our stuff.

Scrappy Pete met us on the front porch with his two little boys, both wearing Spider-man pajamas.

“Sorry, bout that, but you see I’m a scrapper.”

Scrappy Pete led us to the side of his house where all my stuff was piled near garbage cans. We hauled all our stuff to Lana’s car, and then sped off.

I felt like I could relax for the first time in days as we drove in Lana’s VW back to my apartment.

Scrappy Pete, wherever you are, thank you for returning my stuff. The main reason being the glorious return of shark tank, which I thought to be lost forever.

Teddy Got His Groove Back

I had been dating a guy for a few months and it ended earlier in July. To be fair the situation would have never worked out. What I found to be so devastating about the whole thing was the fact that I’m totally ready for a real relationship again after my first big ex, and I am totally failing at everything. Like failing at levels that make me question my own worth and the value of the human race. But that’s a discussion for my therapist.

After several weeks of failed attempted dates, and one-night dates that I expected to be more, I was feeling as depressed as Rosie O’Donnell as she scrapes the bottom of a Cheetos bag.

Then there was a marvelous, glorious occurrence.

Last weekend I went out with a bunch of friends. My one girlfriend was with us, with 2-3 other people.

I was with Troy and I was totally ready for a night out with no worries about talking to guys or dating or anything. All I wanted to do was go to Progress, request “Parition” and then dance until 2 in the morning.

Upon arrival at the bar, Troy saw a guy that made him go into a frenzy.

“The hottest guy in the bar. There. See him?”

We all saw him and agreed that he was supremely aesthetically pleasing.  My girlfriend gives us a wry smile and is like, “I’ll get him over here.”

So she vanishes and I go to the bathroom. When I get back the guy is in the middle of our group. And I’m like “What?” Turns out my girlfriend bought shots and gave him one so it drew him over. He was talking to us for a bit then disappeared. My girlfriend comes up to me and says, “He’s really into you. He’s coming back.”

To which I responded: “Shut up. You’re a liar.”

It turned out it wasn’t a lie, however, and the guy kept coming back over to our group. He never actually spoke to me, but we kind of danced and… to be honest, it was weird.

So the guy takes us back up to the bar to get shots and who do I see across the way, but this Russian guy that I had talked to online. He was really cute and we went out one night, but he didn’t really ever text me back.

C’est la vie.

But he’s staring at me and then makes a remark about one of my texts before he stopped responding when I offered to buy him a drink. Then he’s Russian so in his accent he’s like, “You twerk back there?”

“Trying to,” I said.

“Twerk for Ivan!”

Ivan was his name. So like I was at the court of some Russian King, I was supposed to get my Twerk on. Meanwhile this super handsome guy is buying me drinks.

I wasn’t very drunk at all and I had this glorious moment of pause to think about what was happening.

In that moment I had all the boys.

In the end it amounted to absolutely nothing – Ivan and the hot guy never responded to any of my texts and I remain single and alone.

But one night I was a twerking bell of the ball, and sometimes that’s really all you need to get out there and get a new bag of Cheetos.