Holiday Road: Return to the Scene of the Crime

Tonight marks the one-year anniversary of the crime. We return to the scene tonight.

265 days ago, I accompanied my wife for the first time to her family's Christmas Eve dinner. Night before Christmas is the big tradition in her family, and everyone comes. There is some present opening, this odd photo of the grandchildren is taken and all is well. Plus, since my family doesn't have much of a family tradition of any kind for Christmas, it makes breaking up the holiday travel easy.

My first Christmas with the Crawfords would be an eventful one. That being because some jackass decided it would be a good idea to sneak into the front foyer and steal 5 purses. My wife's was one of them. Took us about an hour to realize they were stolen, but once it was realized, the hunt was on. And I'm not fucking kidding. It was a full-on, Tommy Lee Jones-style manhunt.

Her family is not to be trifled with. Within an hour, we had dissected secret surveillance video we got of the moron scoping out of the house. Then we had cops getting full, detailed reports from all 800 members of the family (everyone had an opinion and viewpoint, believe me). Of course, nothing topped me and her uncles canvassing the neighborhood, several of her uncles in trucks (with fully loaded rifles, no less) and me and a few others checking out nearby forests and dumpsters hoping the prick dumped the purses and kept the cash. It's probably better that the armed uncles weren't successful, because I'd feel sorry for that guy if they had found him.

We found a few clues (the idiot stole a Tupperware bowl, but I guess it was not lined in gold so he left it about 5 blocks away), but no perp, although a quick (hilarious) stop a local gas station had me and wife convinced for a few minutes we had him busted. In the end, we all were left shaking our heads and hoping the cops would catch the dude.

They finally did, about 5 months later, and the wife got a nice restitution check. It's been one year and the family gathers again tonight for the first anniversary of the crime. The ladies joked that they were all wearing fannypacks tonight as an homage. The family is installing a security system for the grandparents, and I bet it's not far from this one, knowing them. I just hope I get the code to shut it down.