Inside the Mind of a Pre-Pubescent boy: Stealing

When I was 5 years old, I made my first venture (the first of not very many) into the seedy underworld of criminal activity.

It was an overcast day in the Northwest, and my father and I were making a trip to the grocery store. This particular trip was no different then any before it. Only on this fated day, anarchy would run rampant in the check-out aisle of Cost Cutter.

The cart was full, and we were standing in line, like any other law-abiding citizens. And as you know, in the check-out aisles at these stores are shelves full of luxury items. Wonderful, teeth-rotting, stomach-churning, obesity-inducing products that no normal 5 year-old child can resist. So I asked, "Daddy, can I get a tootsie-pop?" His answer? "No." Little did he know that this simple act of refusing to satisfy my request would spark an incident that would corrupt my feeble existence forever.

Nobody says no to me! How dare this cheap asshole insist on keeping me from my beloved cherry tootsie-pop! And so I took matters into my own hands. There was one lone, isolated cherry lolly sitting atop the rest. Like a bunch of insolent, worthless peons holding up royalty. The lolly seemed to taunt me, just begging me to rebel against my father and remove her from her pedestal. During my hesitation, one particular life lesson handed down to me from my parents made it's way into the picture. "Never steal, Matthew. No matter what." Fuck authority.

So with my hand, previously pure up until that moment, I shoplifted a tootsie-pop from a Bellingham Cost Cutter. To this day, I have never felt more alive. On our walk back to the car, I was already planning out my life as a committed thief. "Next I'm gonna steal a candy bar and then I'll steal all the video games I want and then I'll rob banks so I don't have to have a job ever and it will be so much fun because work is boring and stealing is awesome!" Running through my head was a maelstrom of theoretical criminal activity, and had I followed through on all those fantastical ideas I would probably be serving a life sentence by the time I turn 20.

The heist was finished, and as I hopped onto my booster seat I removed the score from my pocket. I undressed the lolly, removing the red paper garments, exposing its erotic sugar-fortified figure. I made love to that lolly in the back-seat of our Toyota Tercel. My tongue ran up and down the contours of her form, exploring every nook and cranny. Alas, the performance was interrupted by my father, who had discovered me in the act of oral pleasure. He demanded I tell him where I had gotten the lolly, and I confessed to my crime. I had come so far, only to have my dignity and criminal integrity taken from me.

My father marched me back into the store, as tears streamed down my face, lolly still in hand. We returned to the same cashier, a pretty woman most likely in her early 30's. He explained the situation to her, and then asked me to repent for my crime. Defeated, I gave-in to his request, and apologized to the store-clerk. With a smile on her face, she accepted my apology. And then something miraculous happened. A revelation of sorts. Her hands disappeared behind the counter, and she pulled out a plain paper bag. "Go ahead," she said. "Pick one." Within that paper bag was a discovery that brought joy to my heart. Dozens of tootsie-pops of all flavors. My beloved cherry pops, the pretty-damn-good-but-not-nearly-as-good-as-cherry orange pops, the delicious blue ones, and a couple of those shitty chocolate ones that only losers eat. It was a collective orgy of lollipops, and I had been granted permission to take one free of charge. The clerk informed me that every aisle had one of those magical bags, and all I had to do was ask for one.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Stealing sounds pretty rad in theory, but you just end up getting caught mouth-fucking a lollipop in the back seat of a car.