The Mystery of the Sticky Fingers Bandit

Well, I think it’s been far too long since I made a decent blog post. Today, I want to talk about a mystery. This particular mystery happens to be unsolved, yet there are a few theories that possibly explain what happened. However, none of these theories have been proven.

It all started just over three years ago. Some months before I had purchased the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers, I say some months because some of the records for the case were destroyed in a fire that I made up to create continuity in this blog post to make it look like I’ve actually been investigating this case. Sticky fingers is in my humble opinion is one of the Stones’ best albums, one could even argue that it is their best album. So the some months that I spent with that album were some of the finest rock and roll months of my life, but it all came crashing down one infamous July evening in 2007.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I walked to the kitchen table where my CD wallet had been sitting, and opened the wallet. I stood astonished and aghast. There was an empty slot where previously there had been a CD. I quickly went through the wallet looking at all the CDs trying to figure out which was missing. After making sure that it wasn’t mistakenly put into the same slot as another CD. I tried to control my anxiety. I began searching everywhere I could think.

“Maybe it wasn’t in the CD wallet. I’ll check the Case. Not there. Maybe the CD player, check it. Not there. I know I’ll check my car CD player. Not there.”

Soon I was overcome by the horror of knowing my CD was gone. I pursued all the avenues, the lost and found at work, My CD player at work, the inside of my car, my work’s parking lot, all to no avail.

I had been working the overnight shift that week and had a caller that morning before I went to bed for the day. Immediately my suspicions turned to her. However, that was quickly ruled out, not for lack of evidence, but because I don’t really think she even liked the Stones. I don’t really even actually consider it a theory, I just threw it in because I said I had a few theories, and I didn’t want to have to go back and change that to a couple.

The second theory is probably the most likely. There’s a good chance the CD could have fallen out of the wallet when I was walking to my car that morning. Then anyone passing by throughout the day could have picked it up. I mean it’s Sticky Fingers, some guy was probably walking by and saw it and was like, “score!” On the other hand though, it’s likely that if someone had found it they would turn it in to the lost and found. One time, I did this pen experiment in the atrium, and this pen just stuck around for weeks. I bet the thing is still there even a couple of years later. Anyway, that’s probably better left to a different blog post. I did check the lost and found and scoured the parking lot looking for it. So if someone did find it they took it, if that is in fact what happened.

This is the third and final theory, and the one that I choose to believe, despite my lack of evidence or real investigating.

This will take a little bit of back story. It all started when this crazy thing happened at my work. I can’t really go into detail about it because I’m pretty sure it’s not really supposed to get talked about. So to make a long story that I can’t talk about short, I’ll just say for a particular reason security guards were hanging out in the area that I worked in for the over night shift for a couple of shifts. Anyway, basically what I think happened is that one of the security guards made off with my copy of Sticky Fingers. (It’s kind of fitting right? He’s like the Sticky Fingers bandit.)

At first I had thought it was a different security guard than the one that I currently suspect. The first suspect was an older man and he had talked to me about my music that night, but his demeanor towards me never changed and I had several conversations with him after the incident so it became really hard for me to believe that he could be the guilty party.

Around the same time that I began to realize that it was probably unlikely to be the older security guard. I began to consider that I might have brought the theft upon myself. Now if that sounds peculiar, allow me to explain further.

See the second suspect, who is a much younger guy, is a bit of an odd duck. The shift I was working where he was in the room, he kind of looked lost and was wondering around with a dumbfounded look on his face. Because he was there for a reason which was, and for the sake of my story I’ll give out this one detail, to look out for a crazy former employee who had just recently started no longer working there, I decided because I thought I was clever and because he looked so lost to say, “I think he might be over there in that back corner, you should go check it out,” which he then proceeded to do. He, of course returned from the corner with a slightly confused slightly annoyed face. I hadn’t expected him to go off to the corner. I kind of thought he would have picked up on my humor.

Anyway, it was after that night that my copy of Sticky Fingers went missing. Now I know that wasn’t much proof, and the only other thing that I have to go on, which really isn’t that much at all, is that even though that guy was pretty awkward to begin with he became even more awkward around me and one day shortly after that night, I passed him in the hall, and the whole time he looked away from me. Then right after he walked by me he let out a sigh of relief. A sigh that said, “Whew, I got away with it.”

That’s pretty much my whole case right there. As you can probably tell it’s no surprise that this case remains unsolved today. So as I sit here looking at my empty Sticky Fingers jewel case I think back and remember better times when I could sit and listen to Brown Sugar, Sway, Wild Horses, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, You Gotta Move, Bitch, I got the blues, Sister Morphine, Dead Flowers, and Moonlight Mile all in that order. One of these days I’m just going to have to go out and buy it again.

P.S. I decided to embed the version of Bitch just because it was so good.