My Life of Crime

1974: I was four. I stole a pack of Love Hearts from Wong's grocery down the street from where I lived. My mom had refused to buy me a treat that day, and for some reason my full-on tantrum didn't persuade her to change her mind. So, penniless and powerless, I did what any defiant sugar-addicted child would do. I took matters into my own grubby hands. I remember glancing around the store furtively, looking at Mr. Wong out of the corner of my eye, checking to see where my mom was in the store, looking to see if anyone else was watching...then slowly I picked up the Love Hearts and as discreetly as possible, I shoved them into my pocket.

Later that day my neighbour Stacey McCormick came over to play. Stacey had a voice so shrill she made Fran Drescher seem soft-spoken by comparison. My parents used to imitate her whenever she left our house. I couldn't stand Stacey, but I still couldn't resist the urge to impress her with what I'd done, so I pulled out the Love Hearts and gave her one. I explained to her in whispers that we had to hide them and she squealed, "WHY DO WE HAVE TO HIDE THEM?! I WANT ANOTHER LOVE HEART PLEASE!" My mother spun around, stormed over and pried the pack of candy from my clenched fist. The tell-tale lines of powdered sugar over our lips gave us away. I was busted.

My mom hauled me by my collar back to Mr. Wong's store and made me tell him what I'd done. I started to cry. Mr Wong smiled at me sweetly and waved his hands quickly.

"Is ok, is ok, she keep them--they free!"

"No, Mr. Wong, thank you, but it is NOT ok for Katie to steal from you. She has to pay for candy when she comes here," my mom said firmly.

"No, no!" cried Mr. Wong, embarrassed for me, "is ok--she good girl, she keep."

"No, Mr. Wong, Katie will pay for what she took," and she handed me a dime to give to Mr. Wong and made me apologize. I paid him and he smiled sympathetically at me, and I wanted to disappear on the spot because I was so ashamed.

1977: When I was seven, my family moved. My parents were busy getting the house finished. My sister and brother were in the grocery store next door, but I was killing time at Robinson's. Robinson's always had a bunch of cheap toys sitting in the front of the shop . It was summer and I remember being hot and incredibly bored. The girl at the counter was talking to a teenaged boy and laughing at everything he said. I looked around and no one was looking back at me, so quickly I grabbed a small ball, threw it in my pocket and walked out of the store.

I hurried around the corner and threw the ball around a bit, bouncing it against a concrete wall, but then I was hit by an overwhelming sense of guilt that made my stomach ache. I dusted the ball off, put it back in my pocket and went back into the store. I sidled up to the box I'd grabbed the ball from, and quickly dropped it back in. As I turned around the teenaged clerk was standing over me.

"I saw you take that ball!" she hissed.

"No I didn't!" I choked.

"I saw you!" she snarled.

I didn't have the ball anymore. I'd returned it. This hardly seemed fair.

"I don't have any ball! You can't prove anything!" I yelled and I ran out of the store. I was sick all night.

1986: I was sixteen. My friend Lee and I were hanging around downtown with nothing to do. We went into Fields and Lee shoved a pair of earrings into her purse. I stood back and watched her move through the racks of clothes like a seasoned pro--a scarf here, a lipstick there--I was in awe. When no one was watching I grabbed a training bra out of its box, caught Lee's eye and grinned at her as I shoved it into my own purse. We ran out of the store clutching each other and laughing hysterically.

Then we went to the grocery store. We didn't really need groceries, but there was nothing else to do. Lee's mom's boyfriend was over at her house and he was a jerk, and my parents were normal and that was too boring to subject my cool friend to, so we had few alternatives aside from hanging out in the Pay-Less Gas Station parking lot with the older stoners from our high school, and they scared the shit out of us. We fingered the different items along the aisles, commenting on what we liked or what was making us hungry, and I spied a pack of Chipits milk chocolate chips.

"God, I love those things," I told Lee. "I could eat a whole bag of those."

"Take it," she said.

"No, what am I going to do with a bag of chocolate chips?"

"You should," she said, rolling her eyes at me. "If you don't, I will." I laughed at her, but I was getting nervous. She grabbed the pack off the shelf and shoved it into the enormous pocket of the trench coat she was wearing. As we walked through the store she grabbed other items. Some candy, Teen magazine, a bottle of Ten-O-Six Lotion from Bonne Belle. Anything she couldn't fit into her enormous coat, she would shove into my purse. I was freaked out, but I wasn't going to do anything about it because I didn't want her to think I was worried about it. We continued down the aisle, and as we turned to enter the next one, I felt a hand land firmly on my shoulder. It was a tall skinny guy wearing a sweater vest who looked like Ichabod Crane. It was the manager.

He and another employee walked us into their back office. I could feel my pulse racing. I was shaking like crazy and I thought I was going to start crying. My parents would kill me. Lee would be fine. Her mom let her do anything. She used to drive her mom's car when she was fourteen and her mom told her if she ever got caught she had to tell the cops she'd taken it without permission.

He told us we had a choice. We could either call our parents and tell them what we'd done and get them to come and get us, or he would call the cops. He may as well have said I could either face a firing squad or run naked across a mine field while holding giant magnets.

He left the room. Lee called her mom and her mom said she'd come and get her. When it was my turn, I didn't know what to do. My parents would lose it. So, I dialed Lee's mom.

"Mrs. Mason, my parents aren't home and I need..." suddenly I heard a click followed by a dial tone. The office door swung open and the manager stormed in. He'd been listening to my call on another line.

"I told you you could either tell your parents, or I would call the police. You've left me with no choice."

Lee left with her mom. I sat in the office by myself, stomach churning, waiting for the police to arrive.

The police came and walked me out of the store. Everyone in the store, including kids who went to my school, stared as I left. When I got to the car, they put cuffs on me and made a big show of putting me in the back and locking it up.

At the station, they led me in and finger printed me, and then they stood me against a wall and took my mugshot which they displayed on a bulletin board with all the other pictures of juvenile delinquents. After that they moved me into a windowless office, told me my parents were on their way and that my dad was quite angry and said they'd be a while. I started bawling and a female cop crouched down next to the chair I was slumped in, smiled sympathetically at me and said, "don't worry, my sister used to get into all kinds of trouble when she was your age, and she turned out ok."

I don't know if this was supposed to make me feel better, but for some reason it did, and I gulped out a thank you through my tears and then waited for my parents. And waited. And waited. For three hours, in an empty office, with nothing to do except stare at the walls and worry about what they were going to say.

When they arrived they were very quiet. They thanked the officers and told me to go to the car. Neither of them spoke the whole way home. I cried, "I'm sorry!" They didn't even look at me.

After we got home and walked into the house, my mom burst into tears and yelled dramatically, "What did we do wrong?! First you fail algebra and now this! Why don't you move out if you can't follow the rules!" I tried to defend myself, but I knew it was a lost cause, so I ran to my room, closed the door and wailed miserably into my pillow for an hour or so.

I emerged from my room to find my parents sitting at the kitchen table looking very serious.

"We've talked about what we should do," my father said. "Grounding you seems to have no effect on you. I've called the manager of the store and volunteered your services. Every day for the next month you will report directly to him after school and you will work in their butcher shop until 6, at which time you will come directly home and do your homework."

There was no point in protesting. So, every day after school for the next month, I went to the butcher section of the town's only grocery store, donned a white coat and a hairnet and wrapped meat in the freezer while I shivered, surrounded by huge bloody cow carcasses. I was miserable and humiliated. Students from school who worked at the grocery would snicker and whisper when I walked past. A couple of bag boys would hiss, "Stop thief!" when they came by the counter and saw me working.

After I'd done my time, I refused to enter the grocery store for five years. By that time I'd moved away to go to school and only had to go in there when I was visiting my parents. Even then I still felt knots in my stomach just entering the place. I didn't eat meat for almost 4 years. I had a record until I was 18.

But, I didn't steal again either. I had finally learned my lesson. My life of crime did not pay. I'd been scared straight.

Well, almost straight, anyways.