When I was in junior high I had an unusual hobby: breaking into people's homes. I didn't do it for money; in fact, I never stole anything at all. I left no sign of my presence. I did it for one reason: the thrill of being on the edge of disaster; to test the limits of what I could get away with. So sometimes I would go out at night or skip school and ride over to The Heights to see what kind of mischief I could muster. The way I saw it, there was no harm in it (as long as I never got caught).
Had it not been for the unique characteristics of the place I lived at the time, it would never have occurred to me to start sneaking into people's houses. My family lived near a neighborhood we called The Heights that, for half the year, became a ghost town. The area consisted almost entirely of vacation homes which were only occupied for a few months in the winter for skiing and in the summer for hiking and recreation of that sort. In the off seasons, the place was almost entirely empty, apart from landscapers and some other maintenance and construction crews.
When I was around eight, when people began to build the mountainside homes, I would go check them out after the builders had finished for the evening. They were interesting houses. Some were three or four floor homes with incredible views of the ski slopes. I never got to see the inside of a finished one until much later, however.
One day when I was thirteen I was out walking alone through The Heights, enjoying the strange tranquility of a world conspicuously absent of other people, when the idea to let myself into one of those vacant constructs popped into my naïve brain. It seemed a shame to let them go to waste. "I would just be putting the places to good use; they were made to be enjoyed after all," I remember thinking.
Most of the time when you have a bad idea, you don't know it's a bad idea until things don't turn out the way you hoped they would. This wasn't one of those times. I knew this was risky and stupid, and that was the reason I found it so enticing. I got my hands on some lock picks and started practicing on several different locks. By the time fall had arrived, I felt I was ready to move onto my first break in.
For my first time, I went under cover of night. The neighborhood was deserted, as usual, but I felt highly exposed as I crept through the streets. Nervous, I found a target at the far end of the neighborhood, near the end of a street that was fairly dark and isolated. There was a for sale sign beside the house. I figured I would start with something that was as safe as it could get. I checked to make sure there wasn't a security system, at least as far as I could tell, and I approached the back door. Having no experience with this, I didn't know if I was being far too cautious or if I was actually in over my head. My heart pounded out of my chest as I got out my lock picking tools and went to work. It took me a minute, but, just like that, I picked the lock and went inside.
It felt so deliciously diabolical of me to set foot in someone's home uninvited. Though the thrill was appealing, criminality didn't really come naturally to me; this was the first really illegal thing I had ever done, and I took the possibility of getting caught extremely seriously. I didn't stay very long, but I made sure to take a tour and enjoy the adrenaline. I exited the same way I came in, and made my way home undetected. Never before had I felt so alive.
And so it went: from there I continued to hone my skills and push the envelope of what I would break in to. As I got more comfortable, I had to increase the risk in order to feel the rush again. I soon realized how safe I really was on my first undertaking. Eventually it got to the point where I felt comfortable breaking in to houses in broad daylight after I witnessed the residents leave. I was always able to escape, admittedly sometimes quite narrowly, before anyone came in and saw me. The seasonally occupied homes practically ceased to scare me at all; oftentimes I would do my homework in these houses, spend an hour watching TV, and then leave without anyone noticing. It felt almost like I owned all these houses— like the entire complex known as The Heights was my home.
