Our Thieving Pals

Everybody's friends are thieves.  Every last one of them.  It's sad but it's true.   Stealers, the lot.  It's enough to make you ashamed to know them, isn't it?

They don't think of it as stealing, of course. But if you take someone's stuff and you never bring it back, that's pretty much the essence of what a thief does.  There's no such thing as permanent borrowing, nor is kidnapping an involuntary visit. You stole it.  And stealing is against the law.  Ergo, our friends are crooks.  We don't hang out with our buddies, we consort with criminals.

I cheerfully lend books knowing I'm not going to get them back, but that's okay.  I mind more with CD's but I can live with it. But I hate lending DVD's.  To me, the entire collection has a gaping abyss in it when even one DVD is absent.  Perhaps I'm all weirdo obsessive-compulsive psycho Rainman about it, but it's the way I feel.  I mourn the missing member.  (Insert own tasteless Lorena Bobbitt joke here.)

And the worst is when, in the borrowers' minds, the thing was theirs in the first place and they act like they've always owned it. So you have to act like you're borrowing it from them and then keep it, finally reclaiming it as your own, vexed at the knowledge that they now think you're the big thieving klepto and not them.  And thus friendships deteriorate in a vicious cycle of resentment and bitterness and hatred and murder.

Some people would give you the shirt off their back and never worry about seeing it again.  Now, there's an odd saying. 'The shirt off their back."  I wonder why it singles out the back?   Why do we neglect the front?  How come no-one is said to give you the shirt off their pecs?  Sounds weird, I guess.  

And how come it's always the giving of a shirt that denotes generosity?  Isn't it just as nice to hand over other garments? "Oh, that Tim.  Heart of gold.  He'd give you the pants off his ass."  

I guess what goes around comes around, and it's all among friends, and other cliches.  And what's a cliche, after all, (like my point today), but an observation that we all steal?  

But it still troubles me that my friends and yours are rascals of such ill character, plunderers that they are.

Bless 'em, they do have a way of stealing your heart, too, though, don't they?

I'll give them that.