Fess-up Friday–thievery edition

Things are getting off to a slow start this morning on account of me still being in bed. You see, it’s a snow day here in Austin. We got a whole inch of snow so naturally school was cancelled. To add insult to injury, we have a three day break starting Monday. That means my kids will not be at school again til next Thursday.

If I wanted them around I would homeschool them. Sheesh.

Today’s Fess-Up Friday edition has to do with theivery. Somehow the Sunday School lessons I heard as I was growing up never really sank in because I stole things all the time as a child. From pretty much everyone. Usually I stole candy from people (my mother can tell you all about the peanut butter cups I snuck from her stash. She’d make me sit at the table and write “I will not steal anymore” 500 times. Guess what! It didn’t work! I kept stealing peanut butter cups!)

When I was 12 I had an insensitive uncle tell me in the middle of a family reunion that it was time I needed to wear a bra. After I slithered out of the room and died under a rock, I begged one of my cousins to let me borrow her extra bra. I hated wearing it. I felt like a cat who’s been dressed in baby clothes. At the end of the day I could barely wait to rip it off, but I knew that if my uncle thought I needed a bra then probably other people did too. However there’s a fine line in the tween years between needing a bra and being teased because you’re wearing one without having anything to put in it. If I brought the subject up to my mother, a very buxom woman, I figured she would cackle at the thought of me needing a bra and ask all of our gathered relatives for their opinion on the subject.

I’m sure it would have turned out differently, but in my pubescent mind I could only see the disasters lurking in a scenario involving my mother and my breasts.

So I decided I would have to buy a bra myself. Only I had no money due to the fact that I spent my allowance every week on donuts, gum and chocolate. My only option appeared to be theft.

As I said, I was a good Mormon girl (“good” only if you graded on a curve including my non-member friends like Elaine Fielder who was already smoking her mother’s cigarettes) but stealing something didn’t really bother me too much.

I headed down to the mall and tried on bras until I found a couple that I liked. And I stole them. Hangers and all.

I wasn’t caught.

Eventually when my conscience kicked in a couple of years later I felt terrible. But not before I’d stolen more bras and some Lee Press-on Nails.

How about you? Have you ever stolen anything? What was the worst thing?

| Filed under Bad Things, I'm Not So Great

15 thoughts on “Fess-up Friday–thievery edition

  1. let me just start by saying, I LOVE your blog. You say the things I will never have the guts to say. (Like about wanting my kids around all the time.)
    I went through a stage in life where I stole things too. I lived right up the road from a marina and I went down to the boats with my brother and we got on one of the boats and I stole a hair dryer. Scandalous, I know. i have always felt really guilty about that until now. Now I just feel silly for stealing a hair dryer.

  2. I stole some chapstick once..I meant to buy it and was just holding it because that was all I was going to buy. Well, I am so use to having chapstick, that after a while I just put it in my pocket and left. Felt really bad about it.

  3. Okay, I have only read the first few lines and want to know why you get a three day break starting Monday? I need to switch to your school district!!

  4. I never stole anything because I was a huge chicken. Plus, my conscience always ran on overdrive.

    Love the bra story. Ha ha!

  5. While in the dressing room buying my first bra (with my mother), I shudder with horror at the memory of finding someone's OLD dirty bra inside the box of a brand spanking new one! Any chance you were north of Boston back in the late 70s? LOL!

    And in my case, it was my father who leaned over at one of my softball games to tell my mother it was time to get me one. I still die at the thought of them huddled together discussing it!

    I've never intentionally stolen anything, but I have walked out of Target and the grocery store with diapers in the bottom of my cart. I realized it while unloading into my car and haven't walked back in. Have to admit, it felt great!

  6. The bra thief? How brazen of you. But I can see not wanting to bra shop with your mother. I bet wouldn't even do that today.

    An inch of snow canceling school? hahahahahah
    I grew up in CA. I get it.

    I once stole a sucker from Kmart. A whole 30 min. from our house. My brother outed me, and my mother made me return it. I was probably 6.

    I have inadvertently stolen some produce that rolled under the baby's seat. I usually trek back into the store, but for less than $2 and the hassle of not discovering it until AFTER I'd loaded at least 2 kids into the car, I chalked it up to repentance alone.

    I'd be waaaaay to scared to ever steal anything on purpose.

  7. First, I have stolen. A Big Cherry from 7-11 when I was 7. My step sister told me she would beat the crap out of me if I didn't. SO i put it in my hands and bawled and then walked out. Of course we were caught. I was terrified. We were told never to return to that store. And I didn't, until I was 17 and I was still afraid to go in.

    As for the bra, I was slow dancing with Ken Duncan in 7th grade and he tried to feel my bra. I didn't wear one yet, and now everyone knew!! It was mortifying, but I was still to afraid to ask my mom, so my bff gave me a couple of hers. When my Mom found them in my room she called my gramie and had a party in the Mervyn's dressing room trying them on me.

    No wonder we blog…it's therapy!

  8. Oh yes, I am guilty here. Pretty sure I have told you my thievery stores. Mostly candy but also money from my brother's mission fund. Isn't that awful?! I did get totally caught when I was like 10. Had to be driven in the back seat of the cop car to the police station where they called my parents. Ended with with a criminal record for 1 year, had to appear in court, talk to our bishop, be grounded for a month, get whipped with a belt, etc. Guess what? I have never stolen since!! And that was for a pack of gum and a pack of life-savers. Most definitely learned my lesson.

  9. Your bra story is so upsetting! As for me, I never stole as a kid. I did end up with an extra shirt for my husband from a big clearance sale that we were at. I was so annoyed. I didn't want to drive all the way back to the mall. I didn't call them, either. In fact, I sorta forgot about it until now.

  10. I was about to get on my high horse and say that I never stole as a kid, but then I realized that I never stole FROM A STORE. For some reason I had a very keen conscience about stealing. But then I remembered that for a couple of months in 7th grade,when I was friends with Meghan (a super bad influence on me) I stole a cookie almost every day at school in the lunch line. Just slid it under my tray where my hand would hold the tray. Never got caught and for some reason I don't remember feeling bad about it. But I would NEVER have stolen from a person or a store, for some reason.

  11. When I was younger, I had like a super overdeveloped conscience. To this day, that damn thing kicks in from time to time and I feel the need to be way more honest than any human should. But one day, I had a brief lapse in my conscience, and I stole a poodle sticker from my grandma's beauty shop waiting room. I then proceeded to cry all the way home and admit to it the second we got there. My grandma made us drive back and return it (seriously grandma? SERIOUSLY?!) and since we lived in the mountains and the roads were seriously windy and I get car sick, I threw up on the way. I still think karma WAY overdid it on that one!

    Had my uncle said that to me, I'd have done the same thing!

    That ended up way longer than I thought it would be. Sorry!

  12. I also wonder where your kids go to school that they get a three-day break, but only so I can avoid it. Don't they get enough holidays without made up ones? LOL

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