13 Chapter 12: Any High Will Do
It was a Sunday in October of 2004; around noontime my sister and I took a trip to Zellers. I hadn't showered, I remember wearing a yellow and black coat with sweat pants and boots, and; as you can assume, I was hungover. There was a shiny sheen to my face and I probably looked like an orc that was just pulled out of the ground in the hit movie series "The Lord of the Rings".
Soon after entering the store my sister and I got separated. Down the aisles I went, searching for something worth stealing. I did a swift scan of the perimeter, all was clear. My eager eyes met a rack of reasonably priced earrings (my ears are pierced). The money to purchase them was in my pocket, but no, I was taking these; I mean who cares about a set of cheap stainless-steel earrings? So, I stood there waiting to make my next calculated move.
By this time, I'd developed a bit of a stealing addiction, the adrenaline was too much to pass up. It made me feel like I was a professional thief of legendary prestige. I'd steal American Eagle Jeans (I was drunk when I took them) almost positive an American Eagle employee saw me, but she chose to let me go for whatever reason. Oh, and I also got into the habit of lifting discmans from Sears during lunch hours. Out the doors I'd walk into my friend's car and down to the pawn shop to pawn the hundred dollar discman for fifteen dollars, and for what? To buy McDonalds of course! Up to this point, no one had caught me. Or no one had said anything; probably the latter would have been closer to the truth.
So, there I was at the Zellers in the Brookside Mall, nobody around; or so I thought, and I picked up a pair of earrings, glanced to the right, to the left, and then slipped the earrings out of their package and into my pocket. Amy (sister) came to find me and said "you ready" and I said "yep". We walked out into the mall and just as I thought, "I'm getting away with this you 'Zeddy the bear' brownnosers" I heard a man exclaim, "excuse me? I think you forgot to pay for something...". We made eye contact and I said "oh, yeah I did". All ideas about me just paying and leaving were squashed when two big dudes came out of the store to escort me to the back office; "in shock I was" (yoda). Into this tiny room we went, and I sat down.
Turns out there was a gentleman hired to watch out for juvenile delinquents like myself, and little did I know, he had been watching me the whole time. He looked like a skinny mysteriously dark Russian spy; which I guess makes sense. He was wearing round clear glasses, a grey bowl hat and some casual clothing that was also grey. He told me the police were on their way. Naturally, being a 16-year-old kid, I thought my life was over, emotion flooded my body, and I began to cry. Amy had called my Dad when she realized what was happening and he came walking in after a few minutes. That was actually probably the reason why the waterworks began. I've always held my Dad in high esteem, and his presence put me over the edge.
The police eventually arrived; the officer escorted me through the Zellers (humiliating). He led me to his squad car, I sat in the back as he took my information. My Dad remained calm throughout the whole thing. On the way home; after the cop had left, Dad said that he felt I'd already been punished enough. Weeks passed before anything came of the incident until we were called into the police station; I dressed up in order to look like less of a greasy hobo and more of a wall-street business man. I walked into the police station, pants nicely pressed, chin parallel with the floor, and along with my two parents we walked into the Constables office. He sat there for a moment looking me up and down and then said that I looked as if I'd cleaned up my act, he was judging physical appearance alone of course. He said that no action was required, that I had no previous record and that he expected this would not happen again.
