All of us have committed the act at some point or another in our short and crooked lives. Whether you take a drag off of the blunt facts or you decide to pass the torch to the left, everyone reading this has to admit they have stolen at least one object, ignoring significance, for reasons that simply aren’t justifiable no matter what you’re smoking.

I’m sure a few of you Winona Riders have dabbled with some sort of petty shoplifting in your prime – maybe you sneak a little something into your pocket on the way out of SOS every Thursday after class? Even you self-proclaimed straight-shooters out there can’t deny that you’ve spent hours downloading free movies or made your friends burn you that Matisyahu CD you didn’t really want to spend nine bucks on, but of course, it is not you who poses the real threat. It’s you more ballsy types – those of you who enjoy walking into parties or seemingly empty houses and swipe lap tops, digital cameras and anything else portable and pawnable – that I have a problem with. And here is why.

“Hey! Don’t fucking move!” I screamed.

Frankly, I didn’t know what else to yell in such a predicament; I was too scared to come up with a more menacing command and I figured the dark shadow I just spotted in the cold Davis night wouldn’t be following any of the polite instructions I had to offer.

The bat I held in my fist came in handy now, but I quit baseball back in high school because I couldn’t hit my way out of a 3-0 count – good thing the chicken-shit robber that my best friend and I currently had trapped outside of his apartment didn’t know that. For all the punk knew, the Louisville Slugger I was wielding would strike a death-blow to his skull, or maybe land a solid crunch on any knee caps that happened to flail within my reach.

Personally, if it were my precious apartment that I found the Grinch sneaking out of, I would have hit the bastard in the face the second I came within reach of him. But Galen didn’t have time to lay a finger on the fucker before eight Davis police cars burst onto the scene. Hey, it was Davis, and it was the day before Christmas Eve, it’s not like the cops had anything else to do – well, besides jingle cowbells in unison back at the station.

All of you should have seen the burglar’s face when the cavalry arrived though. He looked like a longhaired, flagellant Uncle Fester who accidentally squeezed out a lot more than he was hoping for. He tried telling the cops he thought he lived in the apartment, but the cops knew he was already knee-deep in his own excrement. They cuffed him and let him drown in it all.

Galen and I later learned that the robber had managed to steal thousands of dollars worth of snowboards, computers and other items he thought worth lugging out of the place. He even lived in the same apartment complex, went to the UC and apparently was the recipient of massive cash flow from his well-off parents.

I just had to wonder, as Galen and I celebrated our victory over a blunt later, why you’d fuck over others like yourself to make a little cash when you really don’t have to. My thoughts trailed off though, as the smoke rose to the ceiling. If one good thing could come of this, at least the Grinch didn’t nab our weed.

Daily Nexus Assistant Opinion Editor Jeff Gibson would look just like Matisyahu if he could grow a beard.