Who Are the Perverts in Your Neighborhood?

Last Thursday I came home at half past twelve in the evening after dinner with friends. I locked up my garage gate, but I left my main door open, with just the screen door shut and barred. The garage lights weren't turned on, but from where I was sitting I could see the outline of the washing I had left hanging on a rack. I was sitting at the dinner table with the cat in my lap at 1:00 a.m. when I saw the peg set hung with a bunch of socks and a single pair of panties swaying back and forth in the dark. At first I thought it was the wind, but I found it odd that I didn't even feel a breeze coming in through the door. That was when I realized that there was a hand thrust in from the townhouse next door, and it was grabbing at the washing. I started yelling and running for the door, and when I yanked at the peg set, the hand disappeared into a small hole in the plywood sheet covering the grill that separates my garage from the one next door. The townhouse next to mine has been under renovation, and there have been carpenters staying there for the past several months. I'm pretty certain that it was one of those laborers who tried to snatch my stuff of the pegs, and I have no doubt that it was the single pair of knickers he was after and not my socks, because it was the only one that had been removed from one of the two pegs that it had been hanging from. My skin crawls at the thought of any of my things at the hands of a sick pervert, especially that of a smelly shit-for-brains construction worker. I've had to endure cat calls and impolite stares from the crew next door for months and I ignored all these things because that's the way these people usually are; bluster with no brains and zero manners. As long as they kept off my space, I was all right. But after this incident, I'm afraid of being targeted for more than just simple underwear theft. I'm not easy with the idea of coming home alone late at night, and I've taken to locking myself in and closing all of my blinds at all hours. I intend to purchase a can of mace as soon as I possibly can, and have asked around as to how I can legally acquire a gun. Someone once observed to me that I was far too paranoid; padlocking the gate all the time and putting the theft bar on my steering wheel when the car was parked in the garage. For a while I was convinced that I held far too much distrust for my own good, and let down my guard for some time. But now I think I may have been completely right to think that every neighborhood, no matter how safe it may seem, will one time or another be visited by someone of evil intent. I don't intend to be a sitting duck the next time someone invades my space. I will shoot, and I'm not even going to think twice.