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January 18, 2006

A Pain in the Pane

Sunday night I heard and felt some sort of concussion rattle all the glass in my upstairs windows. It was about 10 p.m. and I was in my bathroom, getting ready for bed. I could have sworn something had been thrown at and broken one of my windows, but I checked every pane in every window upstairs, and they were all fine. So I got in bed, read for a while, slept heavily, got up on Monday morning around 9 (because it was a holiday and I didn't have to go anywhere), went downstairs and opened the drapes in my living room, and discovered that the big pane of plate glass in the storm window in the front of my house was broken.

The good news is that only the storm window broke; the panes on the window inside are still intact, so I haven't had frigid air blowing into my living room; nor have I had to worry about someone crawling into my home through some giant hole in the front of my house. And that is genuine good news and I am grateful that things aren't as bad as they could be.

The bad news is that someone threw something at my window--from the marks on the unbroken pane behind the storm window, I'm guessing it was a very firmly packed snowball or a chunk of ice (there's been plenty of it in the streets lately)--hard enough to break it.

I looked at the window for a few minutes, and then I did what needs to be done: I hauled out the yellow pages, looked under "glass," and called someone to come see about replacing the broken panes. The receptionist told me that they'd been "bombarded" with calls all morning. "Someone was busy last night," she said. "I don't know if it was a full moon or what...."

"It was," I said. "And the beginning of the semester, and the night before a holiday."

"Anyway," she said, "there are lots of broken windows, all over town--east side, west side. Since you've still got the window inside that's not broken, we might not get to your place until tomorrow, if that's OK."

I told her it was OK. And indeed, on Monday, it was OK. But Tuesday I sat in my living room and watched as the sky grew gray and sullen. The wind became fierce and rattled the jagged shards against each other; every so often I'd look up just in time to see a few more nasty chunks of glass break free from the casing and clatter against the inside window before shattering on the sill.

A guy from the glazier's finally showed up around 3 p.m. "How you doing?" I asked.

"Better than you," he said, eying my window.

He was helpful and pleasant, and figured the best way to deal with the problem was to take down the broken storm window, take it in to the shop, and replace the pane there--he said it would be easy and quick and not that expensive: the estimate he gave me was just over a hundred bucks. I was very glad about that last bit: I'd hoped it wouldn't cost much more than that, but I'd certainly been prepared to pay more.

The problem with doing it right away, he added, was that the wind was so ferocious and what was left of the window so brittle and jagged that it was too dangerous to try removing the storm window alone, and he wouldn't let me help him--he said he needed another professional, and that it could be a day or two before he could make it back with help. "If I were you, I'd just close the curtains for a couple of days and hope for the best," he said.

But this morning around 8:30 I heard still more glass breaking, and when I went downstairs, the guy was back with a partner and they were cheerfully knocking out the remaining scary bits. "You caught us breaking in!" the new guy said, grinning.

"You caught us breaking something," the first one said.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," I said. I may even have a new window by noon.

It occurred to me that the breaking of my window could have been intentional, that someone--a disgruntled student, perhaps--could have been angry enough at me to want to damage my home. But a couple of things lead me to suspect (hope?) that it was an act of random vandalism: first of all, I've been pretty generous when handing out grades the last couple of semesters; secondly, mine was one of many, many windows broken Sunday night--I find it highly unlikely that every pane shattered ended up that way because it belonged to someone in particular.

And I don't get it. I don't see the appeal of vandalism for vandalism's sake. I admit I find it therapeutic to throw a rock, good and hard, but I try to throw it at something that won't break: a tree, for instance, or another, bigger rock, or a body of water at least the size of a bathtub. I also understand revenge; I understand wanting to hurt someone who has hurt you first. I'm not saying I approve of it or am proud when I indulge in it myself, but I understand it. But the appeal of random vandalism--that I definitely don't understand.

I'll have more to say about this tomorrow.

Posted by holly at January 18, 2006 9:31 AM