I Will Tell You Stories...

This is a very entertaining story, in my opinion, and it could only happen to me, probably...

Every year, my neighborhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn celebrates its West Indian heritage by throwing the West Indian Carnival celebration on Labor Day weekend in September.  The celebration is in observance of the annual tradition of Carnival, a widely popular and common holiday that is celebrated all over the world.  In America, it is known as Mardi Gras and is well-known in its association with the city of New Orleans, and its great population in derivation from the West Indies and Africa.

Traditionally, the celebration takes place in the springtime, immediately preceding the Catholic season of Lent.  Since Lent is typically a season of repentance, Carnival is generally a time for one to get all their vices out one last time, which is exemplified in a big party, with...lots of vices.

Why Carnival is celebrated on the opposite end of the calendar in Crown Heights, I am not aware of, but it is a very large celebration, including a parade, one of the largest in New York, and typically draws around one million spectators.  The parade route runs along Eastern Parkway, the main thoroughfare closest to my house, along which I walk everyday to get to the Subway, and also run along because it is lined with trees and has a wide pedestrian mall on either side of the street.

The night before the parade I went for a jog along Eastern Parkway, where I bore witness to police setting up barricades and vendors setting up stands from which to purvey food and beverages, as well as nationalistic emblems via T-shirts, flags, and other paraphernalia.  The great nation-states of the Caribbean are all represented here:  Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, St. Martin, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, etc.  There are too many to name.  Each one is represented by multitudes of the neighborhood population and by parade float.

The event is very well-attended, and as a resident of the neighborhood, I felt obligated to take part.  My roommate, Anthony, and I planned to make a day of it.  We walked along the parade route, picking out various sundries and foodstuffs to munch on, and periodically returned home to drink some beer.  We admired the costumes, the music, and even at one point jumped in the crowd to march along the parade route.  We took up rank behind a very loud and celebratory float, which coincidentally was hosting Wyclef Jean as emcee.  Though we never saw him, we could hear him cheering the crowd on over the public address system.

Not long after we marched in the parade, we were making our way towards the direction of home, trying to observe more of the celebration when the Jamaican float went past.  As that happened, the crowd got very boisterous and unruly.  Already bunched together, it became apparent that there was no room to pass through until the float passed us by, so Anthony and I stood still, separated by a few people.

Up ahead, some people began causing a commotion and I could see people ahead of me being forced backwards very rapidly, as if being pushed from the front.  The pushes became more frequent, and though I could not tell who the culprit was, rumor was circulating that a fight or some kind of violence was breaking out ahead of us.  I saw Anthony duck out in front of me, and as I made my way out of the crowd, I became a victim of the preexisting momentum.  People were pushing, causing some kind of ruckus; the vendors behind us were pleading with us to stop pushing, in hopes they would not lose their precious vendibles, but their fate was inevitable at this point.  I turned to face the crowd and as I did that, a violent surge pushed me back.  I braced myself, trying to maintain my upright standing position by holding onto the people around me.  I had practice at this action previously in all my recent experience being in the middle of crowds of people at music festivals and in crowds of people in New York.

I nearly fell over this time.  I was disoriented, and when I returned to equilibrium, it became quickly apparent that my wallet had been lifted from my back pocket.  

I immediately realized it was gone, having been checking on it frequently throughout the day.  Also, I was aware that because of the color of my skin (I was about one of two white people in the immediate area, my roommate being the other), I would be considered an easy target for thieves.  

Reaching into my back pocket and feeling emptiness, my heart rate instinctively started to race.  I began sweating profusely.  Panic quickly set in, and I frantically began to search the nearby area.

My financial information flashed before my eyes (mostly zeroes and negative numbers), and I quickly began dreading what would soon be my immediate future of calling up banks, canceling credit cards, and the hassle of trying to get another state-issued ID without the benefit of having my current existing one.

As I wrapped my head around what I was about to face, I was still trying to escape from this parade with my life, so I eagerly made my way out of the crowd.  

Taking a few hindered steps across the sidewalk towards the outside of this mess of people, I spotted my wallet sticking up out of a young man's front right hip pocket.  This young man was quite a bit taller than me, docked in urban garb, including a baseball cap and an open hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans.  He most definitely fit the urban Brooklyn teen-age profile, yet he did not know what he was up against.

Seeing my wallet, I instinctively reached for it and grabbed it out of his pocket, reclaiming what was rightfully mine.

I addressed and confronted him, saying, "You stole my wallet!"

To which he replied, "Nah, I didn't do that.  It wasn't me!"

In disbelief, I turned and scrambled to get out of this crowd.  I was less than half a block from the street on which I lived, but my heart was pounding uncontrollably, and nerves were shaken immensely.  It was, at the least, a little scary.  

I made my way to the corner and turned left, trying to collect in my mind what had just happened.  Looking through my wallet, I found that everything I had previously was still there and accounted for (when you don't have any cash, it's pretty easy to keep track of it).

A couple blocks later, when I felt at a safe distance from the crowd and its associated turmoil, I called my roommate to see where he had gone to.  He was safe, and a few minutes later, he met up with me and we made our way home.

I told him the story of what had happened to me, and found myself having difficulty believing it even as I told it.

It is a pretty remarkable story, even from my perspective, and I am lucky that I am able to tell it.

Whatever caused the scuffle at the parade was not consequential enough to be put in the news, so I never found out happened or who caused the mischief.  All I knew about was what happened to me.

I felt sheer panic and fear for about twenty seconds before I figured out how to corrected what had happened to me.  I was lucky to come away unscathed.  And even though I was briefly a victim of a crime, I used my inner crook to do justice and right the wrong behavior of another.

So that's the story of how my wallet was pick-pocketed and how I pick-pocketed it back.