Chequered Past

For Writer’s Workshop Prompts for September 12, 2024

I started stealing things early in life. Mostly,  they were my big sister’s things. Some were just a “borrow” like her Rush* albums. I mean, she gets them back, right? It just drove her crazy that I would even think about stepping into her room. I get it now, but as a 13 year old, it was just payback for picking on me all my life.

Eventually,  she moved out of our parent’s house and took her stuff with her. But now I was 15. I needed important stuff like cool clothes and makeup! So I started shoplifting.

My friend Cyndie was into it, too. We got good. We lifted all kinds of things and started a competition on who could lift the most outrageous loot. Her best heist was two bottles of Boone’s Farm wine that she managed to stick down her pants and walked out of the store with the odd pertuberances hidden underneath a big jacket. I got some points for opportunistic creativity when the power went out briefly at a Circus World, and I stuffed several fistfuls of wind-up toys in my purse. I had no idea what I took until I got home.

All things come to an end, though. She got busted at (of all places) a Kroger grocery store. I was with her. They could have hauled me off too, but it was the one-in-a-million time I decided to actually buy the things I wanted.  Other than my wallet, a half a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and most likely,  a stray wind-up toy, my purse was empty.

I had to lie my ass off that I had no idea what she was doing.  She supported me on that. There was no sense in us both going down. She got hauled off to jail, parents called, grounding ensued.

I remember thinking all this was like the end of the world. Time stopped. It was hard to breathe. I was worried about Cyndie. I suddenly felt guilty for all the stuff I had taken. I threw out my misgotten goods or gave them away. I didn’t want all that bad karma that clung so tenaciously to them.

I still show gratitude to the higher power that intervened that evening.  What would have happened if I had dropped something in my purse that night? One simple, dumb act could have set the trajectory of my life in a different direction. It wouldn’t be Cyndie’s last time in jail. Did this first act of defiance nudge her towards her issues with addiction and a million other bad decisions?

Life is like that, though. Good or bad, all our decisions alter our course down that one-way street called life.

It would take one more brush with the law before I finally learned my lesson. It’s a story for another time…

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*Yes, you read it right.  My sister and I are two girls that like Rush. We’re both bass players. 😉