Is it stealing if it's already stolen?

I decided to commemorate my "first" night out in my soon-to-be-new-neighborhood by starting a blog. Normally I'm pretty opposed to the idea of blogging, especially blogging as a 20something post-college grad dipping her toes into the waters of the real world - buuuut then I remembered: all I do all day, every day, is read blogs. So this is kind of like the flip side of give-and-ye-shall-receive.

Last night, my best friend and I went to Curbside. I don't know much about it, other than that it's a bar in this lovely little town I call Richmond. We don't go to bars often. We're plenty over-age, but since we still live with our parents, the whole going out thing hasn't materialized. There are plenty of stories that accompany that little factoid, but I'm saving them for posts later. Anyway, we arrived at Curbside around 10 p.m. Pretty early for the going-out-folks, but we had just lost - again - at trivia and A was pretty tipsy, and why shouldn't we go out?

Remember when I said we still live with our parents? This also means we live in the suburbs, and this also means that we frequently need GPS to get around these hip parts of town that we don't frequent very often. Nothing is more hilarious than that crazy British-voiced lady on the GPS squawking that we should be merging onto the highway when the absolute last thing I am going to do right now is merge onto a highway with a toll. I hate tolls. So I skipped that instruction, and British lady pauses, then says in her cold, cold voice dripping with condescension: "Recalculating route." As if I caused her so much inconvenience. Sorry, lady, you were about to cost me 70 cents that I do not have.

So we're at curbside. We've met up with a couple guys we know, and drinks are ordered, and it seems like we're settling into a nice little gabfest to dull the bitterness of defeat at trivia. Then, A spots it. A street sign. HER street sign. Her street has the indignity of being named "Gaylord," which never fails to crack up fifth grade boys. And apparently patrons of this bar. However, A was offended. How dare they?! How dare they take HER street sign and put it above the bathroom as if it were nothing more than THEIR little joke??

At this point she approaches the bartender and explains to him that they have stolen her street sign. Okay, maybe the sign has long since been replaced, but it's the principle of the thing. This sign should not be in a bar! He laughs at her increasingly frantic arguments that she should have the sign, that "look! look at my drivers' license! I LIVE on this street! It's mine!" He explains that a patron brought it in as a gift.

This is the exact wrong thing to tell this girl. Because, well, shit, they stole it in the first place - how much trouble could she possibly get into for stealing it back? She tries to get the waitress to sympathize with her cause, to rally to her aid, but A earns nothing more than the designation of "the most hilarious thing I've ever heard!" from the waitress. In return, the waitress receives a cold, cold glare from A when she comes to check on us later on.

Unfortunately, A wasn't steady enough to steal it herself, and I didn't really want to flirt with a tall man and convince him to help us. The night wouldn't get much better, as one of the guys we were with stuck A with his tab when he decided to just leave the bar.

So anyway, welcome to my blog. Guard your street signs with your lives.