When I were a nipper....
...it was the cool thing to do to swipe those plastic keychain thingies that came on pairs of jeans (you must be at least this old to remember them).

So one day, me and my partner in crime were in the clothes shop supposedly examining jeans for purchase (never mind that we were 9 and were looking at the adult size jeans) when the alarm goes off. I damn near shit myself, thinking I was going to go to juvenile hall for swiping cheap plastic shit. The shop assistant came over, and I stood there frozen to the spot. My mind was screaming run, but my bladder was saying, "make one move and you'll be squelching all the way to jail". By this time, my partner in crime had casually walked away and was watching the proceedings form the safety of the street. Bastard.

The assistant came up to me and calmly asked me to step to one side. Which I did. Then he plugged in the alarm cable that connected all the jeans that I had been stepping on, and returned to his desk. I'd like to say that after this scare I stopped my mini crime wave, but in reality it just fuelled more as I came to realise that your average shop assistant is thicker than your average 9 year old.

(and yes, I am so old that when I was young, radio alarm tags were a sci-fi dream)
( Damocles wants no part of your debauchery, Thu 10 Jan 2008, 12:13, Reply)