While walking through the hood last week, my girlfriend and I were amused to come across a car that bore an uncanny resemblance to her old car, stolen over six months ago. There aren't a lot of white 1984 Honda Civic sedans around, and this one prominently - displayed brand-new registration and tags. Oddly enough, we noted, this car displayed a similar pattern of dents as the stolen car had... and the same cigarette burns in the driver's seat. We circled the car, incredulous, compiling a lengthening catalogue of reasons why this could only be the lost Honda. It took us a while to accept the truth.

This car was such a piece of shit that when it vanished, we were at a loss to explain why anyone would have bothered to take it. It had refused to start one night, and when we returned to jump start it, it was gone. Someone had apparently wanted it badly enough to use a tow truck to get it. We reported it to the police and the insurance company, and after the initial shock wore off, began to realize that we were better off if the car was never heard from again. It would be worth much more in insurance that in the rusted, creaking flesh. Weeks later, with no news from the police, the car was declared MIA and the insurance company paid up.

Now, months later, we were looking in the windows of the same car, mere blocks from where it disappeared. There were odd little improvements: it now had a radio antenna, and a pull-out stereo with a complete set of speakers. The trunk now bore an Ourisman dealer's sticker. Most amusingly, there was now a blinking dashboard light suggesting a burglar alarm. But they hadn't fixed the telltale cig burns, or replaced the rear cigarette lighter, or repaired the bent change drawer.

The D.C. police, who admittedly have bigger problems on their hands, were pretty unconcerned about our find. Oddly enough, so was the insurance company, which paid for the car and technically owns it. A couple days later, we came across the Honda parked in another nearby spot. At least we get to keep an eye on it while one of our neighbors drives around her stolen property.

I don't know why, but stealing pisses me off like few other easily-achieved sins. At much as that might suggest I'm deeply ethical, it probably just marks me as a member of the privileged class defending my ill-gotten trove. There's the kind of soul-rotting, consuming Covetousness that leads to the acquisition and hording of material things, and there is the kind of mean-spirited, deluded Covetousness that leads people to believe they have the right to take others' possessions. I belong somewhat reluctantly to the former camp, obeying the social mandate to accumulate wealth. Folks who aren't offered quite the same opportunity for wealth-gathering may tend to gravitate towards the latter group, and I shouldn't blame them for seeking a means of redistributing the goodies.

But I do blame them. I feel enormous dislike, actually. In Senegal, where I spent a little over three years, the social prohibition against theft is so strong that urban thieves are frequently beaten senseless by crowds before anyone bothers to call the police. Yet the intense poverty and large numbers of rich tourists in Dakar makes pick-pocketing a worthwhile risk for some young men. I was lucky enough to live in a community where it was big news if someone swiped some rice from the local shop, but my occasional trips to Dakar were sobering run-ins with the reality of privilege. Here was a culture with an extreme sanction on theft, and yet quite a few young people had decided that the rules weren't worth following if it meant staying poor. And there I was, being reminded every time someone went for my pocket that I had something there to lose.

As in most tales of class struggle and clashing Covetousness, this one ended badly. No one ever succeeded in mugging me. On the forth attempt, I'd had enough, and I decked the unfortunate thief. My covetousness beat out his covetousness. It felt pretty good to get the better of someone who wanted to deny me something -- probably about as great as stealing it would have felt to him.