My Life, in shreds

Dear You,

Shakespeare wrote: Who steals my purse steals trash; / ’t is something, nothing;’ Twas mine, ’tis his, /and has been slave to thousands; /But he that filches from me my good name /Robs me of that which not enriches him /And makes me poor indeed. Wasn't he farsighted, though, in anticipating "identity theft"?

Today in fact it is far better that someone steals the moneybag from your car (oops! Did I just let on that I have one in mine?) than some documents from your mailbox. I bought a shredder recently -- and although it's generally too troublesome to carry the junk mail to the basement and the little diamond-shaped remains back up, I know I SHOULD be doing it. When I'm cleaning out the files of old records, the grinding noise in the background at least gives me the illusion that I'm protecting myself against an increasingly dangerous world.

As I am doing all this, however, it does not escape my thoughts that here is just another bit of evidence that there really were "good old days." I still remember leaving campsites all day with possessions in plain sight on the picnic table. I recall that if there were locks on the doors to the houses I grew up in, they most certainly were not locked. (What if the neighbors need something and we're not home? my mother would have asked.)

Simply put, honesty and trust were in greater coinage then; today too many are busily stealing them. Too much has already been shredded.