Once is a Misfortune, Twice is Carelessness?

The classic Oscar Wilde play, 'The Importance of being Earnest', is a comic farce in which deception is rife, and in the end it all unravels to the audience's amusement.

There are many famous quotations from the play, but the one that strikes me at the moment is, "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

Now I am quick to say that the incident which inspires me to recollect this quote is not the loss of either of my parents, or anyone else's parents either come to that.

Actually, it's about a bicycle, my son's bicycle, which he rode to school at lunchtime, and when he went to ride home, it had mysteriously vanished.

Mind you, when I say vanished, there was actually a small remainder, a residual, a clue, if you will. The locking cable had been left behind, neatly severed in two, just to prove that my son did actually lock the bike to the bike rack.

And the connection to the quote? Well this is the second time the exact same thing has happened in the last six months, from the same racks, leaving the severed locking cable behind, and everyone else's bikes untouched.

Of course, I know that it wasn't carelessness on the part of my son that resulted in the bike disappearing into thin air. One or more villains were and are clearly responsible.

You could argue that he should have used a stronger bike lock, and maybe he will the next time. Maybe I should have purchased and insisted that he use one of these heavy-weight D-Locks guaranteed to resist everything except an oxy-acetylene torch or a nuclear explosion.

Or maybe the school should beef up their security systems, CCTV, locking bike sheds, etc.

On the other hand, after some 3000 years, you would think we might have got the hang of one of the easier commandments, "You shall not steal."