YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS FUCKING STORY.

It will change your life.

I was told this story over 25 years ago, straight from the source. I’ve been telling it ever since, and figured you might enjoy hearing it.

I remember very little about school. I’ve worked hard to block most of it out.

But I will never forget the day one of my English teachers walked into our classroom, ashen grey, with a thousand yard stare as she relayed what happened to her.

Photo by Nagara Oyodo on Unsplash

After school, she’d popped into our near-by department store in central London to use the toilet. Mid-stream, in her periphery… she catches an umbrella hook seizing her handbag, and dragging it out of the stall at speed. She shrieked, failed to grab it in time, probably peed down herself, and staggered out of the cubicle, pulling her pants up. By the time she got out there, they were already long gone, and the store was packed. Deflated and in shock, she headed to security to report the incident. Apparently this was a somewhat common occurrence lately. She told them she didn’t care about the money in the bag, after all she was a teacher, there was no fucking money, she just needed it back because it contained her students’ end of term hand-written essays. (The late nineties!) She left her phone number and asked them to call if the bag turned up in the trash.

She made her way home and let herself in with a stashed spare key. As she was preparing her dinner, she got a call. It was the store. They had found her bag! They relayed to her all the contents inside, including the essays, everything apart from her wallet of course, they confirmed her personal details, and arranged a time where she could come and pick up the bag in the morning, where she could also file a police report. She explained she would only be able to make it at lunch time, and arranged to meet them then. She spent the rest of the evening canceling her cards, and trying to take her mind off it.

She spent the day anxious and angry, but ultimately relieved that she wasn’t going to have to tell twenty hormonal teenage girls whose periods were all in sync, that she had lost their coursework…

At 12.45pm sharp, she hurried to retrieve her bag. When she got there, she gave them her case number and relayed the call. The staff were confused. There was no recollection of anyone finding the bag. There was nothing in lost and found, and nothing reported on the system. The police were nowhere to be seen. There must have been a mix up between the day and night staff. They manager was mortified, and promised to get to the bottom of the case by the time she came back after school.

Frustrating, but not terribly alarming.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

At 4pm, she made her way back to the store. This time it was a little more concerning. Still no police, and they still hadn’t located the bag nor uncovered which member of had staff called her. There was CCTV footage of it being taken, but never found. They promised to keep searching and to call if anything came up.

Baffled and now very worried, she went back home to wait for their call.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when she opened her front door.