When I was younger, around 7 or 8 I would guess there was this store in the mall called Woolworth*, the store was a chain like the big red bullseye and had mostly the same stuff.
One day I was in the store with my mother, her husband (we’ll call him JA for jack ass) and their two kids** and we were in the toy department where JA was amusing himself with some silly string. The container had already been sprayed by some other misbehaving person before JA started. Well, JA and my mother and the kids walked away and I lagged behind a little and decided to spray the silly string. I’d never done it before and since it was already done I didn’t see any real harm in it. Well I pushed down the button and the can was empty! Just as I picked up the can to shake it and try again a sales associate walked around the corner and caught me. She started fussing at me and telling me that it was shoplifting and I freaked out. A customer called her attention away and while she was helping them I just walked off and found my mother. A few minutes later security was called to the Toy Department and I freaked out. I didn’t say anything and just hoped that JA would have my back if they tracked me down although knowing what I do about him, I seriously doubt he would have done anything other than fuss at me and let me take the fall. I had this sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach and while that used to be one of my favorite stores in the mall I never wanted to set foot in there again, which was unfortunate because mom*** worked in the mall and that store was right around the corner.
For years I was terrified to go in that store because I was certain that they had a picture of me up as one of their most wanted offenders. You know, because, the squirting of the silly string was most definitely a felony.
*or Woolsworth or Woolworths...something with wool and worth.
**technically my brother and sister and I love them as such but it's too confusing for me to go into my family dynamics. I wasn't raised as a part of this family, just a visitor.
***technically my step-mom, but she was never like that. I have my mother who gave birth to me and my mom who raised me.
Monday, November 20, 2006
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2 comments:
I have a similar situation from when I was a kid! We were visiting some caverns here in Texas, and even though I was like 5 years old, I understood that we were not supposed to touch the stalagmites. After walking through the caverns for hours (it felt like hours), my legs were tired. I lifted one foot to relieve some pressure off that leg and my little sneaker touched a stalagmite. I touched it! It was going to stop growing now! Ruined! After that, every time I heard sirens in the neighborhood, I was convinced that they were going to arrest me for touching the stalagmite with my sneaker.
I also have a similar situation to report. When I was young, my sister and I went with our parents to a store called Leh's so they could buy a new refrigerator. While there, my sister and I were playing with a toy (some kind of thing that had a top attached to it and you pulled a string and the top was launched off of it to spin in all its top glory) and we dropped it and it broke. So I tucked it away on a shelf and quietly led my sister back to my parents...and we never mentioned it again. However, I was often convinced that some taped footage from the security cameras would show me breaking the toy, and I would be in big trouble.
Now that I am an adult, I realize that the $5 toy would not have been worth the manhunt. And now that I work in retail, I realize that one of the workers probably just found the broken toy and threw it away...and it is not my fault that Leh's went out of business many years later. It was just their time.
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