Dear Person Who Stole My Plant

It was my first apartment in southern California, in a large apartment complex bounded by Mountain View Street on one side, the railroad tracks and the dry wash on the next side, and a large orange grove on the side where my ground floor apartment was. It was a little one-bedroom apartment, a nice size with a sliding door out onto a tiny patio right by the path that came in from the carports. Upstairs lived a Mission Aviation Fellowship helicopter pilot who was gone for periods of time as he was preparing to return to Borneo. I didn't know any of my other neighbors.

One day I put my ailing houseplant out on the patio to get a little bit of sunshine. I've never had a very green thumb, and those plants that look a lovely vivid green in the store just seem to get scraggly and brown-edged in my care. But this was back in the time when I was young and idealistic about these things, and I thought perhaps a bit of sunshine would be the great healer of my plant.

Instead, when I next checked on my plant, it was gone.

It was a rude awakening. I could hardly believe that someone would have taken my property. Just walked up to the patio by my apartment and ripped off with it! I was incensed. This was not how life should be, nor how people should behave. My elementary-school teacher fairness-hackles went up on high alert. Someone needed to be told off.

I did have one more plant, and it, too, was needing more sunlight.  So I put it out on the patio with a sign.

Dear Person Who Stole My Plant:  It was mine. You took it. I miss it. I hope you really needed it and it has brought you happiness. Please do not steal this one. 

There, I got that little lecture out of my system. My second plant sat out on the patio for a few days with the sign, and then I brought it in. And that was the end of that.