I’m sure it started when they were young. First it was a piece of candy from the Pick-A-Mix at the grocery store, then a pack of baseball cards from K-Mart, then a Polo baseball cap from Younkers. Now these thieves are coming for your stuff, or have they already stolen it?

Last weekend after dancing the night away at the Dean’s List, some friends of mine went to grab their coats for the walk home. When one friend saw her coat gone from the pile, she grabbed a guy who bad been standing by their coats a short time before.

“Have you seen a green coat with plaid on the hood?” she asked.

“Uhh, no,” he said turning away. My friend grabbed the dude’s arm.

“Are you sure you haven’t seen a green coat — it was right here just a minute ago,” she said.

“Oh, a green coat with plaid on the hood? Yeah, my friend just wore it home.”

Well, my friend was angry and cold, so she demanded to be taken to her coat. With another friend she rode several miles to an unknown house where she found her coat wrapped around a drunk slob lying passed out on the floor. After peeling the coat off his body, my friends walked home. Hey, at least she got her coat back, unlike another friend whose coat was stolen from the same bar the weekend before.

These thieves go to the bar coatless, but then decide they’re too cold to make the walk home without some warm outerwear. So they pick up the nearest coat, put it on and walk home. What do they do with these coats when they get home? Do they have a special coat rack for their stolen coats?

Yesterday I talked to a girl in the newsroom who had a party before break where her VCR, cordless phone, compact discs and her whole liquor cabinet were liquidated by the party guests. As if this weren’t bad enough, these thieves threw her car keys out in the back yard. Nice guests.

Everyone likes to go to parties, but having a party in your own home is always a liability. So, party hosts put their valuables and breakables away and try to party-proof their house. They never really think that guests might steal their possessions.

I can conceive how pocketing a CD from a party could be pretty easy, but stealing a VCR? Maybe these thieves enjoy the challenge of trying to get away with bigger and bigger thefts. But talk about being a buzzkill on the party. And that’s the thing — someone is gracious enough to invite you or your friends to a party and you thank them by stealing their stuff.

The motivation behind stealing eludes me. I would think the students who attend Iowa State probably have a coat at home to wear to the bar. Maybe it’s not fashionable, but neither is a frostbitten limb. Maybe these thieves are afraid their coat will be stolen. As for party thieves, how many of these people truly couldn’t afford that VCR if they saved their money, or got a job?

I think reasoning behind these thefts is that the culprits think the victims deserved to have their stuff stolen. If a person is stupid enough to leave her VCR out at a party, she deserves to get it stolen, right? Wrong. These people aren’t stupid, they just don’t want to believe that their friends and classmates would steal their stuff. They’re trusting.

I won’t quote the Bible, but I will quote something we all have learned at one time or another: The Golden Rule. “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” Were all the thieves pulled aside the day we learned this rule? Did they have a special seminar on how to boost car stereos?

For all of you criminals who think it is OK to steal stuff, how would you like it if someone you didn’t know wore your coat home from the bar and left you without a winter coat during sub-zero temperatures? Or how would you like to be stuck listening to Spin Doctors over and over because it was the only CD that wasn’t stolen at your last party? Think about it.

Erin Walter is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.