My scavenger hunt is going into someplace that I normally see and being curious enough to go in there and write about what was going on and what I saw.

Instead, I searched my memories and one memory that will and has always stuck with me is the first time my house was robbed. And for the first time, in my life, I’m going to put it down. I feel my eyes welling up and my chest getting tight because this moment was the first moment that I think really shaped the rest of my life.

I’ve lived in Vietnam where I had my dogs kidnapped in the middle of the night and I learned later that they were probably eaten, the house I lived in with my family, across the street was a little girl with her older sister and mother (who wasn’t there) they  lived a little above the poverty line where at least they had a roof over their head and i wonder about them to this day, i was kept a close eye on because i am an american and to other vietnamese people kidnapping a little girl and holding her for ransom money is a possibility. Vietnam opened my eyes and the things i learned there as a kid i don’t think had much of an impact on me as this.

This is America. I was in the second grade. It was a rainy day, I liked and still do like the rain. But then it was just another gray day. It was a little later in the day, had to be a weekend because I wasn’t at my after school babysitter (down the hill from my house), it had to maybe be 6p or 7p. My mom had just picked me and my siblings up from the baby sitter’s house. I was so excited because at home my dad had made my favorite soup, white chicken chili, and I couldn’t wait to eat it.

My mom pulled into the garage connected to our house. I grabbed Ann Marie’s baby bag and rushed through the door leading to our basement. It was dark and unfinished with tools laying around because my dad and his friends were working on it. I’d gone through the basement before and it gives me a weird dark, creepy, basement vibe but something about this time was different. I didn’t know what but i knew something was wrong. Then Tiffany, my sister who is two years younger than me, rushed past me and ran up the stairs and immediately i shook off the feeling and ran off after her.

Upstairs there was the soup warming away in the crock pot. This is when I noticed things are a little different. My parents are very neat people and like order in their house. They live by that saying: everything has a place and everything will go back into its place. putting down Ann Marie’s diaper bag, I noticed that my dad’s video camera box was laying over on the side of the table empty, he only had it out for holidays or birthdays and we didn’t have any of those coming up.

Then Tiffany came from around the hallway, probably coming back from her room, “What’s with all the pennies?” she asked and that’s when I noticed that the floor was COVERED with pennies just tossed about and then I heard my mom’s voice.

“Girl’s get out!” she said in Vietnamese. I don’t know what she saw, but when my mom says to do something, you do something.

We went to our neighbor’s house so my mom could call the police and wait for our dad to come home which would be at 8pm or 9pm.

I remember standing in the room that looked at our house and the alley. From the other room, I could hear my mom talking to the police and my sister complaining about being hungry. I was too.

Eventually, the police showed up and the next thing I really remember is sitting on the living room floor eating some Vietnamese food my mom had picked up from the store. Tiffany was starving so I gave her my pieces to eat while I made them into smaller pieces for Ann Marie to eat.

Then a police officer sat down next to us:

“What are you guys eating?” 

I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t really know myself, I just knew it tasted good. I offered him a piece and he declined and went back to my mom. I continued to feed Ann Marie as I watched tiffany play with the pennies on the ground. What was up with the pennies? Tiffany today thinks that it was the robber’s way of laughing at us.

There’s a part about this huge piggy bank I used to have. The robbers stole the entire thing. I know that because it was a cermanic pig if they broke it glass would be everywhere. I had that pig since my first birthday, I was 7 when this happened, my mom had been putting money in there since saving up for college and it was all gone. She says there must have been over $1000 in there.

Eventually, the police wrote up their report and left. I don’t think my dad was home yet, but he was close. I asked my mom if I could eat some soup and she told me not to touch it. Why? Just in case the robbers might have poisoned it or something. She dumped the whole thing out.

I think about this memory a lot because I like analyzing it to see where I come into play. I think because of this I lock the door immediately when I walk inside the house, I don’t like wasting food because I watched my favorite soup poured down the drain or Vietnam and the sisters or my parents refusing to let me leave the table until I finished my food, my habit of not eating just to let others eat. I don’t know what else to say, but there’s the place I went to and now it’s here.