3 very short stories of juvenile robbery.
1) As a 6 year old I gained access to the cupboard at school where they kept all the blank exercise books and stole 2 of them because I thought I could use them at home to draw in, etc.

At home I was terrified that my parents would find them so I hid them away for a couple of days in case the school decided to call every parent to trace the 2 missing books (such is a 7 year old's thought process).

I would lock myself in the toilet with a pencil and one of the books to draw and practice my writing, but it was no fun doing this on a grubby carpeted toilet floor in a house with no heating, plus I was wracked with guilt and terror that I would be discovered. After a few days of this I threw them in the rubbish bin.

There followed weeks of anguish that my crime would still be discovered and I remember one evening the phone rang at 9pm while I was in bed and I sat bolt upright, heart pounding, listening to who it was. I thought the dustmen had found the unmarked exercise books in the rubbish and were calling my mum to ask her if they had been thrown away by mistake.

2) During a garden fete in the grounds of a local hospital, at age 7 I was walking around with my mum and spotted some balloons on a stall, so I took one to show her. My mum was absolutely horrified and dragged me back to the stall to hand back the balloon and apologise to the man. She then spent 10 minutes lecturing me on the evils of theft and how I was lucky that I had not been thrown in prison with all the other naughty boys, etc (no such luck).

3) As a 15 year old I stole my mate's underpants during P.E.

I do feel that these crimes are all inter-related.
( Dixipoos Bye Bye Blackbird, Sun 13 Jan 2008, 13:12, Reply)