Thomas Crown tries shoplifting, hilarity ensues.
We were thirteen-ish when the remake of the Thomas Crown Affair came out, and our youngful selves unsurprisingly found great liking at it. However, as all fads of our young years, this, too, passed - except for the hero of this story, one of our housemates. He was totally and completely mesmerised not so much by the movie but by the character of Thomas Crown. And one fateful afternoon, whilst walking home from rugger practice, he declared he found the career of his dreams: he wants to be, literally, Thomas Crown: bored millionaire and master thief extraordinaire.

Mind you, this is the age when kids want to be doctors, veterinary surgeons, pilots and occasionally Mr. T, way before they realise that the sight of blood makes them vomit, vets spend half their time digging elbow-deep in bovine anal cavities, you can't be a pilot with tritanopia and the A-Team isn't hiring at the moment. So we more or less forgot about it, until, a few months later, upon coming back from holidays, he presented to us his brilliant strategy of becoming a criminal mastermind: namely, incremental development of his skills. He would, so he said, start small: namely, with nicking sundries from the tuck shop a short walk from school every time he could get permission to leave grounds. We didn't particularly listen to the rest of his plans (though I am sure they ended with him being something between Danny Ocean and Tomas van der Heijden) - we were already quite convinced he did not have the balls to shoplift, never mind the rest of the misdeeds. Now school has not only been a fairly posh, but also a fairly sheltered place, so it did not exactly teem with resources for a budding criminal. But that did not deter our hero, who with his usual studiousness set out at the task of reading and noting (!) every single literary or cinematic depiction of shoplifting he could lay his hands on. Finally, armed with this knowledge, one morning he announced with a hysterical chuckle otherwise generally observed in those about to be hanged that he's going to 'do it'.

What his careful prep did not seem to have acquainted him with is the fact that shoplifters tend to operate quietly, not make a huge spectacle of themselves, and would never ever tell their friends of their plans if they knew that such disclosure would inevitably result in about two dozens of excited thirteen-year-olds shadowing him and doing the general see-what-happens routine. So I suppose the fact that when he finally positioned himself in the tactically advantageous cover of the chocolate shelves and gently slid a Mars bar into the breast pocket of his blazer, about twenty people were looking over his shoulder, has evaded his attention. He appropriated the property belonging to another (rather dishonestly, too), as the Theft Act 1968 would say, but the real challenge, namely getting away with it, lay still before him. Not the least due to the inspiration of his witnesses, who, and not necessarily motivated by helpfulness, suggested to him that Thomas Crown would actually walk past the shopkeeper and say hello, rather than sneak out surreptitiously, he now had to think of an exit strategy. This, somehow, escaped his attention when he planned his first heist. So, in the haste of the moment, he decided that the best way to steal a bar of chocolate and not be suspicious would be, well, to buy another bar of chocolate legitimately. So he grabbed another Mars bar, and leisurely walked up to the cashier's.

"Is that all?" - asked the cashier, as he laid the bar of chocolate on the counter. He answered in the affirmative, to which the cashier asked him whether he was sure. At this point, he ought to have realised...

...that about half an inch of the bar, with wrapper and all, was poking out of the breast pocket of his blazer.

The rest is history. He turned the sort of red people only turn when they know they blew something big time, and muttered some lame excuse along the lines of 'oh, I forgot, yes, of course, this one, too, please, sir" etc. The cashier was kind enough not to have raised the issue to the police or, worse, the school, so he was only (only?!) mocked by us for his spectacular failure at crime.

You will be delighted to hear that he went on to lead a perfectly respectable life and apart from a few fines for driving over the speed limit, he has stayed clear of the law.

Or maybe they just never caught him.
(adelie discovered the joys of a board sig on, Thu 10 Jan 2008, 17:34, 2 replies)

Nicely told
Have a *click*
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Thu 10 Jan 2008, 22:58, closed)

^This^
Literate, eloquent, smile-raising... what's not to like?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 11 Jan 2008, 10:33, closed)