Stealing Ice Cream in Changzhou

Sophie Ren

Professor LJ the Raingirl

AP 2 English

11 November 2011

The Ice Cream Thief

Changzhou, China always has a hot summer. I hate summer because it’s so hot. I just want to stay in my room with the air-conditioning on, but on the other hand, I love summer too. I don’t have to wear a lot of heavy clothes like I do in the winter. I don’t feel cold any more, and I love sunshine, although sometimes it’s too bright. But the most important thing is that I can enjoy my favorite ice cream at any time.

Last summer, I was living in my grandfather’s factory. I bought a huge supply of ice cream and put it in the chest freezer. The chest freezer was sitting in a small room on the first floor of one of the buildings at the factory and other people knew I had my delicious ice cream there. When I felt like eating some creamy and cool ice cream, I would go and get one from the freezer.

Time passed. Suddenly, one day I discovered that it seemed the number of ice cream treats was not correct. I counted them carefully and then left. The next day, I opened the freezer and checked again. To my surprise, I had lost one of my delectable ice cream treats. When the count did not add up to the correct number, the smile disappeared from my face. Several days later, I lost two more, which made me think I should investigate the situation. I was going to catch the thief.

There is CCTV in the factory, but I did not want to watch a minute-by-minute video record of the entire time period my ice cream had been disappearing. It was too long. I was not sure when the thief took the ice cream, so I gave up on that plan after watching only a small part of the video. I didn’t find anyone in the video, except me.

Second Step: I checked on all the trash cans outside the building. I finally found some wrappers from the ice cream in the garbage; however, I proved that they were bought by the workers. I failed again.

I changed my tactics after getting nowhere with first two strategies. I decided to warn the thief rather than catch him. I wrote a letter with the words, “Don’t steal my ice cream! I am always watching you through CCTV!” on it and stuck the letter on the chest freezer so that anyone who opened it would see it. I didn’t lose my ice cream anymore. The thief got the message.

Later in September, I was told that it was my cousin who ate my ice cream. I realized I was like a little stupid child doing all these petty tricks to catch a thief. I felt like a 5 year-old again who cared more for her ice cream than her cousin. I knew now that I shouldn’t have worried so much about a few ice cream treats that disappeared from the freezer. I relaxed and chose to ignore small things which don’t matter. The world then became a better place.