An open letter

Dear Stranger,

It was 3:30 a.m., last call at Mel’s on Saturday night. We only interacted briefly, but you left me thinking about you for the rest of the night. If you find it in your heart, reach out to me so we can reconnect.

Now, I know what you must be thinking: This is one of those Missed Connections. Oh, Lord, no. Not even close. The Internet is good for a lot of things, but I’m not yet desperate enough to turn to it for dating. No, stranger, we probably didn’t even meet, we probably didn’t share a single word or exchange a single glance. But I know you are an egomaniacal, self-serving little prick. For, you see, last Saturday night, you stole my coat off the bench at Mel’s and left me to walk back to EC in single-digit temperatures and minus-zero wind chill, cold and coatless.

Did my jacket keep you warm? Does it fit you well? It’s a pretty nice coat—a black Banana Republic pea coat. It’s my favorite coat, in fact, one that I had owned for three-and-a-half years, having brought it my first semester at Columbia. People wear pea coats in New York, but not in Buffalo, my hometown; with that coat I felt one step closer to being a New Yorker. Which is to say, that coat had sentimental value to me but none to you.

My evening had been going well, at least by Columbia standards—a dorm party at EC, followed by 1020 and Mel’s. So when, around a quarter to four, the bartenders were shooing the dipsos away from the bar and the bouncers started leering at patrons to leave, I went for the bench where I had placed my coat an hour earlier and found the scarf and hat I had stuffed into my jacket lying suspiciously alone on the bench.

Why you didn’t steal those accessories along with my coat, I’ll never know. Perhaps like other bottom-dwelling, scum-of-the-earth criminals you leave your signature at the scene of the crime just to baffle grizzled police detectives and sozzled college students. Whatever doubt I had over whether my coat had been stolen or just taken accidentally was laid to rest when I saw two other barflies buzzing around in search of their respective winter wear. You’d obviously lifted theirs too. This wasn’t just some sudden kleptomaniacal itch that you were scratching; this was premeditated thievery.

Theft is not uncommon on campus, and surely every single last one of us has had something taken from them (Lord knows I find food more appetizing when it’s my suitemates’). Unknowns among us—some obviously Columbia students, some obviously not—steal property for myriad motives: for kicks, for profit, for personal use. I ought not speculate on your particular motives, stranger, but I will anyway: Given that three coats had gone missing that night, I imagine you stole the coats to sell them. Perhaps you truly need the money—but more likely than not you are a fellow Columbian, and that is not the case. Everyone knows Columbia students sell drugs when their wallets are light.

When I asked a bouncer at Mel’s that night what I should have done to protect my property—given that the restaurant didn’t have a coat check, as far as I could tell—he simply offered that I should have kept a better eye on it. I didn’t agree with him then—I did, after all, have to walk half a mile home in cold, albeit comforted by a slice of Koronet pizza. Now, as I prepare to take a day out of this weekend to shop for a replacement jacket, I realize I should have been more careful with my belongings.

I wish I could say that Columbia is a community of mutually supportive and respectful collegians who abide by a simple kindergarten maxim of not taking what’s not theirs. But as an economics major, I’ve been taught that people—college-educated or not—are self-interested actors, and if their interest is to steal your coat, they’ll be damn sure to act on it. If I had been more careful, I wouldn’t need to write this letter. I’m the one responsible for my irresponsibility.

What I mean to say to you, connection I wish I missed, is: It’s not you, it’s me.

Always yours,
Dino

Dino Grandoni is a Columbia College senior majoring in economics-political science. He is a former Spectator head copy editor. The Lowest Common Dino-minator runs alternate Fridays.