Sep 18, 2023 3 min read

Years ago, a Porch Pirate pilfered a package from my front steps. The burgled box contained 10 copies of my book, “All I Want for Christmas.”

It was a lucky break.

The criminal in question got stuck doing the job I didn’t want to do. He had to sell copies of my book!

Part of me hopes that the thief in question had an unboxing video on TikTok or YouTube. While I’m proud of the book, I suspect there was much cursing after the crook unfurled the bubble wrap and found Kate and Tony’s love story set in a quaint, albeit fictional, town in Connecticut.

You can’t trade a delightful Christmas rom-com for drugs. While the book has sold all over America, England, Australia and, for some unknown reason, Lichtenstein, it probably doesn’t do well on the black market.

I hope those copies of “All I Want for Christmas” found good homes.

Having Amazon deliveries poached from the porch is fairly common. Porch piracy is a widespread concern. However, Robin Swanger takes the cake, or, in this case, the porch. The Georgia man is accused of swiping a whole porch. He allegedly purloined the entire 8-by-10 structure from his neighbor in a small town outside of Atlanta.

Chris Stapler, the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office investigator, said, “The porch was very well-constructed, with top-of-the-line lumber.” The pilfered porch was valued at $3,000.

Stapler told the local news, “Some people may shrug their shoulders and say it’s not a big deal, but when you take someone’s property without their consent and the value of this porch is $3,000, you can’t just go and take stuff off someone’s property.”

It’s that kind of sharp insight that could get Stapler promoted (or punched).

P.S. I tried really hard to get at a “Stapler punched” joke in here.

But I digress, like I do. The porch returned to the neighbor’s property, upside down.

If have a bare front stoop that needs to be gussied up for a garden party, you can borrow mine, but put it back the way you found it.

Swanger is not a pleasant plunderer of porches. He’s accused of committing some other not-so-nice crimes in his small town 40 miles from Atlanta. He was arrested for a plethora of felonious misconduct, but you have to give him credit for the sheer chutzpah of the crime. He’ll never be able to up his game. Where can he go from here? Can he steal a game room? A kitchen? Maybe he can make off with the whole house?

He’s just one man.

Frankly, I don’t know how he had the strength to rip the porch from the property and carry it away in one piece (and then return it). I support the conspiracy theory of the second Porch Pirate, or, perhaps, a party of Porch Pirates, a band of veranda villains.

If he acted alone, you have to give him credit for his strength and determination, but he’s crazy. Clearly, Swanger is not playing with a full deck.