Apple Picking

Those of you who go to Good Shepherd or are on the email list probably got a note, as you did last April, that Matt’s phone had been stolen during church. For the second time now, during the service, someone has rummaged around in the sacriaty and made off with Matt’s phone. And then wiped it clean and sold it.

We definitely know this now because yesterday afternoon Elphine and Alouicious and I, as we were wandering around the wilds of Binghamton looking for birthday presents for little girls, presents like, and I’m quoting from the list, A Stuffed Cat and A Blue Dress. Blue? Really? It has to be a blue dress? It’s not the season for blue dresses. Where was I? Oh, yes, while we were about to enter the great dreamland of Walmart–a dreamland for Alouicious anyway, who has figured out he can get anything in the whole world there, less of a dreamland for me, more of a shuffling round in a circle feeling overwhelmed and morally inferior–we got a call from someone standing around at the verizon store who was realizing that the extremely good deal he had got on his phone was not such a good thing after all. The three of us lept in the car and navigated the wretched parkway construction in three and a half minutes and met a young man and his girl freind who was cradling Matt’s phone. It had been going to be her birthday present.

We all went into the Verizon store and had to stand there foolishly while the black shirted, sneaker clad, ipad carrying scammers, I mean service representatives, tried to figure out whose turn was next. You know, we can’t have a line, and there can’t be places to sit, and we can’t truly have all the information there is about how much we’re paying, because otherwise we’d definitely chose to pay less…where was I? Sorry. Eventually a languid young man came over and blinked unsympathetically. “I’ve seen it all,” he said, which statement I found unbelievable. He was clearly not old enough to have seen it All. On his end, he wasn’t going to do anything about the fact that this slim beautiful phone was extremely hot. “The police call it Apple picking,” he said, “because it happens so often.”

Matt agreed, via Skype or something, that the young couple could keep the phone. They’d been scammed, we’d been scammed. The only person not scammed was the Verizon guy. We hacked into the phone which had definitely been erased of ecerrything. “You keep it” I said to the young women. “May God bless you. I’m with church of the Good Shepherd. May God give you a wonderful birthday.” She followed me out to my car and gave me a surprised hug. “May God bless you,” I said again.

So today we call the police and see if we can’t get further than last time. And we pray for the church and the world. And we continue to be very careful about where we put things down and what we even take over to the church. And the vestry will continue its conversation about security both during the week and on Sunday morning.