Hi BonsaiGuy.

This type of thing has happened to us a number of times, in a number of ways.

One particularly demoralizing event occurred a couple of days after Thanksgiving several years ago. The day before, my husband spent hours installing a new car stereo that he had just purchased. He was going to play golf the next day, there was a long drive to the course, and he was very much looking forward to enjoying his new stereo on the way there.

What happens?

The following morning he comes raging back into the house, his face a mask of fury. (He's not the explosive type, either). During the night some A------e had bashed his way into the car, ripped out the new stereo, did major damage to the car door, and disappeared, all without our knowing it. We never heard a thing.

The whole next day we were both majorly bummed. He played golf, but he didn't enjoy it. And I spent the day feeling violated too. It's just that most of the time this stuff doesn't happen, so you tend to develop this feeling of invulnerability. So when you realize that it can and does happen, it's just a devastating feeling. You start looking around you, seeing threats everywhere, afraid to leave your car, and so on. I mean, it just makes you so G---- D---- mad!

The only thing that helped both of us slowly begin to return to normal was to talk about the incident to people we met that day, just raging and venting about how s----ty it made us feel. And what happened was, it turned out that just about everyone we talked to had had something similar happen, and somehow just the act of commiserating began to relieve some of those feelings. It was a blessing, the way people would share this stuff.

And of course I might add that we felt like such dorks! It's like, Why didn't we do this? Why didn't we do that? And so forth.

In short, BonsaiGuy, I feel your pain.