In my youth, I stole, among other things:
- Two dozen children’s shoes – all left footed – and the display table upon which they were sitting
- Many orange traffic cones
- A grocery cart
- A New Bedford high school snare drummer’s sticks and his backup sticks
- A stethoscope
- The blank, white pages from hundreds of children’s books
- A candlepin bowling ball
- A payphone receiver
- The Scottie dog from at least a dozen a Monopoly games
- All of the underwear that Robert Archambault packed for our week at Yawgoog Scout Reservation
- The flag and mascot (a stuffed beaver) of a North Adam State University’s frat house
- A “Speed Checked By Radar” traffic sign (which I still own today)
- Many, many pepper shakers
- Lester Maroney’s grade book
- A blue spruce tree from a neighbor’s front lawn
- A case of McDonald’s birthday cakes
- Several garden gnomes
Happily, I have since learned to walk the straight and narrow. Not only is theft illegal and immoral, but it can sometimes lead to terrible results:
Case in point:
Last week, a thief broke into a box truck in Denver and stole a dolly and a box labeled “Science Care.” It’s unlikely that the thief knew what the box contained, because it was filled with several human heads bound for medical research.
I was astounded to discover that the shoes my friend and I stole were all left-footed children’s shoes.
Just imagine how the thief who opened a box filled with human heads felt.
The old adage “Crime doesn’t pay” has never been more true.
