Shoplifting

My friend X engaged in shoplifting only once.  He did this at the age of twelve.  His venture into this unscrupulous practice did not turn out particularly well. 

A few of our mutual friends, including two black-haired brothers (I shall call them “the two black-haired brothers” for the purpose of relating this story), were accomplished shoplifters.  If “accomplished” strikes you as too positive a word, I assure you that I do not intend this as a complement.  To make all of us feel better about this, I will add that the two black-haired brothers eventually stopped shoplifting and became fine adult citizens.  They voted on occasion and one of them even went so far as to sacrifice his own life to save the life of a third, younger brother, on a sinking ship in the Bering Sea.

You cannot become more upstanding than that.   

These mutual friends, the two black-haired brothers, took up smoking cigarettes at the age of about ten and eleven, respectively.  They were crass, loud, and could spit better than anybody we knew.  They practiced spitting constantly.  “Watch this,” one or the other of them would say, and then they would…

Okay, no need for lurid details.

For a while, the brothers supported their smoking habit by snitching an occasional cigarette from open packs left lying around by their parents or any other smoker within their territory.  As their smoking habit gradually took root and the number of cigarettes required to sate them grew to a sizable figure, the black-haired brothers came to realize that a new system for procuring smokes might be required.  They struck upon the idea of a newspaper route as a way to finance their smoking habit as well as pinball games and candy.   

Two things dawned on the black-haired brothers as they started into their paper-carrier occupation.  First, delivering papers seemed curiously like work.  Secondly, spending money on cigarettes when they could now buy candy or fishing gear seemed, well, goofy.

Out of these distressing elements arose what might be described as a shoplifting spree.  Using their paper route and paper bags as cover, they would drop into one of the local stores and give the owner a “free” newspaper.  While one brother engaged the owner in pleasantry and presented the paper, the other got busy raking goodies into his paper bag: cigarettes, candy, that kind of thing.

This probably went on for far longer than is should have.

One day, the black-haired brothers decided to have X help them pilfer goods in the grocery.  They outfitted my friend X with a paper bag and took him into the store.  X had never stolen anything in his life.  Naturally, he quaked and shivered from fear the whole time he wandered around the store.  He felt certain somebody was watching from just beyond the displays of bread and canned goods.  He kept slipping back and forth between groceries and hardware.  While the younger of the two black-haired brothers distracted the store owner, the older brother carefully raked items into his paper bag.

X watched.

Finally, shaking horribly, X swept something into his bag.  He quickly whisked down the aisles, and then burst out the door onto the sidewalk and into the glare of full sunlight.

All three boys soon gathered again in an alley a block away.

“I got some good stuff!” enthused the older of the black-haired brothers.  He quickly brought forth packs of cigarettes and a few candy bars from his bag.  They all touched the booty.

Satisfied with that, the two brothers started poking at the newspaper bag hanging from X’s shoulder.  “What about you, mother-humper?” asked the little black-haired brother.  “Show us what you, grabbed.”

X slowly opened his bag and lifted the items he had brushed into his bag.

The black-haired brothers stared in disbelief.

“Light bulbs!” screeched the older brother.  “You took light bulbs?  Why did you take those?  What are we going to do with light bulbs?”

A shoulder-punching and spitting frenzy quickly developed in the alley.

So began and so ended one life of crime.

--Mitchell Hegman