Five Stubby Fingers

I shoplifted only once and my Mother was good enough to embarrass and scare the living hell out of me in order that I would not try it again.

I was young enough to be walking but not yet tall enough to see over the counter at the check-out in K-Mart. The line was long and I was restless, waiting with my Mother and younger brother (who got to sit in the front of the cart). I spotted the barrettes, 10 on a card, dangling from a rack at my eye level with the other impulse items.

“Mom, can I have these?”

“No. We didn’t come in to buy plastic hair clips. You don’t need them.”

“But, MooOOOoooOOm! I want them!”

“NO,” she said, firmly, “and don’t touch anything else.”

I may have continued to whine, I don’t remember but I do know I pulled a card off the rack. I looked at the five sets of barrettes in bright colours: red bows, yellow butterflies, a trio of blue flowers, a pair of purple love birds, and more bows that looked like white ribbon. I slipped the card inside my jacket, hanging on to the bottom of the card from the outside.

We finished shopping and returned to the car. My Mother loaded everything into the car and buckled my brother and me into the back seat. As she was about to drive away, I pulled the card out from under my jacket to look at the barrettes.

“WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE?” She yelled. I figured she must have eyes in the back of her head but now realize she saw me in the rear-view mirror.

I couldn’t speak. I just pointed back toward K-Mart.

She turned off the engine, got out of the car, got my brother out of the car then came around and opened my door. I looked up at her, blinking, and honestly scared. While she had never hit me I considered that there was always a first time.

She reached in, unbuckled me, and told me to get out of the car. I didn’t move.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we are going back inside to return that and you are going to apologize.”

And we did. We went to the customer service counter and my Mother told them she wanted them to call the manager. The few minutes it took for him to get to the customer service desk were some of the longest minutes I’ve ever waited.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked my Mother.

“She has something to say to you,” she said, motioning to me.

“Sorry,” I said, “I took these,” I thrust the card toward the man who took it from me. “Sorry,” I repeated.

“Well,” he started, then paused. “Thank you for returning them and how about we don’t let that happen again?”

“OK,” I said, to my shoes.

My Mother thanked the manager for being understanding and marched me back to the car. Whether I had been told to or not, I spent the rest of that afternoon in my room.

Note: due to my age at the time of this incident, some details may not be precise. I do remember my Mother yelling, “Where did you get that?” in the car and the manager telling me not to let it happen again. The rest of the dialog is creative license. I also remember very clearly the barrettes; at the time, I am pretty sure those cards of barrettes sold for about 79 cents but my Mother kept our family on a tight budget and cheap plastic hair clips were not in it. 

It’s also funny to consider this story now, as an adult. I wonder whether the manager had to suppress a smile or whether he was making note of a future delinquent. I also wonder whether I’d have gotten away with it now, in our world of security tags, mirrors and cameras. As a parent, I recognize now the pain in the ass it must have been for my Mother to haul me and my brother out of the car (though that was in the days before car-seats) and back into K-Mart but I never shoplifted again, so clearly her tactic worked. 

I was inspired to write this after a call for submissions following a recent episode of CBC’s The Current on shoplifting.