vandalism and thievery

The bell was tolling quarter past noon when I rode up to the Sample Gates at Indiana University. A young man was sitting on a low wall searching for something in his backpack. Wait, no, he was not searching for something, he was shaking something. He was shaking a can of spray paint under the cover of his backpack. Just as I rode past, he leaned over to his right and began painting on the "No Skateboarding" sign in the grass. A few hours later, I came by again. He had drawn a mean face with teeth.

After the job talk this afternoon, we all adjourned to a nearby conference room for some chex mix and tea. The other Laura and I walked in to see a young man carefully stacking his fifth bowl of chex mix into the crook of his arm. He looked at us startled, and asked, "Uh, is there a meeting in this room now?" We stared at him stupidly and said, "Yes..." "Oh," he replied as he started dumping the mix back into the party bowl, "I thought one had just finished and was just... uh, yeah." I turned around to put my bag down and he left. I thought he had dumped all of the almost stolen food back into the big bowl, but the other Laura told me later, when the chair of the department commented on how low the chex mix looked, that the guy had only been apologetic enough to return one fifth of the goodies in his hands.