» Shoplifting

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.
(Thu 10th Jan 2008, 17:34, More)

» Have you ever seen a dead body?

A Christmas story with three dead bodies
If one intends to live by the James Dean rules of live - viz. live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse -, anaphylactic shock may not be the solution of one's choice, unless of course one's idea of good-looking is with a tormented expression on the face, covered with rashes and hives, in some cases at least covered in one's own vomit and generally an unpleasant sight to behold.

Last Christmas eve was spent with my family, as tradition dictates. It was a pleasant enough affair, cue turkey (that's one of the three dead bodies down), port and the usual extended family catching-up discourse which everyone was deeply immersed in, so nobody really paid attention when a rather ghostly wheezing/coughing sound started to emanate from one of the seats. Up until, that is, the people around the poor chap realised that he did not choke on a leftover fragment of the dead bird's furcula (that's the wishbone for those of you less anatomically aligned) but was in fact going into anaphylactic shock.

At which point, to use that time-honoured colloquialism for situations like the presently described, shit was regarded to have hit the fan.

Anaphylaxis is a catastrophic allergic reaction that results from the body releasing large amounts of a mediator substance, histamine, in response to a protein it is hypersensitive to. As a result, a number of classical allergic reactions happen (hives, rashes, anxiety, abdominal cramping, lachrymation &c.), but that's less critical than the joint effect of two facts, namely, first, that histamine causes blood vessels to dilate, which in turn results in a sharp drop in blood pressure, which in turn causes a strain on the heart by demanding it to beat faster to keep the shop open (reflex tachycardia), second, that it causes soft tissue to swell up and block the airways and suffocate the victim. Now without circulation and breathing, things are not generally going well for people.

Anaphylaxis is reversible by drugs, most importantly by adrenaline (not into the heart, though, this isn't Pulp Fiction). Epinephrine was duly administered by the poor chap's mother, a former medical professional, but to reasonably little avail - so little, in fact, that when the EMTs arrived, the chap went into full-blown circulatory collapse. It took them almost a minute and half to revive him and get his heart to do a normal sinus rhythm again. He was, literally, dead for more than a minute. A dead body.

And you know what? That chap was me.

I awoke a few hours later in the ICU, trying to breath and trying to think

As a sidenote, I have not had anything that would be regarded as a near-death experience. I awoke in a hospital room a few hours later, still struggling to breath and drugged up to my eyeballs. The following time was a bit of a haze, but I remember an old lady in a surrounding bed, in a rather bad state. I made a few phone calls and then went back to what amounted to sleep among the given circumstances. It was fitful and restless.

When, on the next day, I was wheeled out the ward, I saw the old lady's bed empty. She died overnight.
(Mon 3rd Mar 2008, 19:53, More)

» Faking it

Exposed
A year and a half ago, I started dating the most wonderful girl on Earth. Except I'm a big wuss with regard to talking about this sort of thing, so I never told my terribly posh and easily disapproving parents how we came to meet (it involved much, much alcohol and circumstances that might have made my father smile and congratulate me behind mother's back, but would certainly have launched a thousand ships and a million disapproving words from my mother), and once we've been going, I really couldn't face the increasing wave of reproach. Living half a continent away, this isn't too hard to engineer, even if one is close to one's parents. So we've had an awesome time, while my dear parents were in significant ignorance about me going out with the Girl.

Until I was stupid enough to land myself in hospital with a medical emergency (this sort of shite happens to me way too often!).

At which point, as soon as I was in a state to, I had to call my parents. Which, as conversations go, was rather fun.

- So now you're on your own, son?
- No.
- Care to elaborate? - all pity and compassion vanished from my mother's voice at the instant.
- Umm...
- Out with it!
- Well, I'm here with my girlfriend.

Boing. about a minute of mute silence on the other end of the phone; cue me assuming a twisted grin and wondering whether I'll be beheaded, impaled (more or less a family tradition) or merely disinherited and would have to make my living playing the flute at the corner of St Paul's. Much to my pleasure, my parents decided it's not wise to traumatise me so soon after being ill by a tirade of shouts and a long moralistic lesson about loyalty and truthfulness, probably mostly in classical Greek and long drawn-out quotations from Plutarch and Cato the Elder. So the conversation ended on a cool but not overtly hostile note, and that as of itself was a battle won.

Deciding to fess up at this point was probably the right choice. The Girl got away having saved the day in their eyes, my parents being fully cognisant that I'm a loser and couldn't tie my shoes unless given express guidance, and my little untruthfulness was never brought up again.

Conclusion: it's not a sin if you don't get bollocked for it.
(Sun 13th Jul 2008, 13:03, More)

» Dumb things you've done

Corridor rugby
Corridor rugby has been a big hit with us at school. Being very silly sixteen-year-old boys, the frantic tumble and the huge bloody pile-ups in a corridor not much more than a yard and a half wide really were our idea of an evening well spent (mostly those evenings when our resident overlords spent engaging in activities other than faithful supervision of their charges). School knew about our proclivities but never particularly bothered as nobody really ever got hurt and quite obviously there are things you just can't police effectively. It was, in other words, a time of bliss.

Fast forward to New Year's Eve of a not-so-recent year. As a sort of coming-of-age thing, I was left to organise a new year's party in our countryside house, sans parents of course. Cue bouts of music I'd be embarrassed for these days, drinking habits we'd certainly be ashamed of (for some reason, we thought that the two-per-person limits on Don the Beachcomber style Zombies was basically there for those of weaker dispositions - never mind that in terms of alcohol at least, most of us still had considerable parts of their virginity) and lots of general nonsense. In a moment of exuberant intoxication, someone beheld the Harbinger of Doom on the lawn outside: manifesting itself as a football, apparently.

Cue the six of us all falling into the eerie silence and eyes catching. Cue the ladies realising that in a minute, there will be bloodshed as sure as anything, and deciding to stay away from it if at all possible. Cue one of us - really, no-one can remember specifics of this kind anymore, and even if we would, we wouldn't intentionally entertain reminiscences of that sort for long - fetching the ball. Cue scrummage in the nearest corridor. Cue suddenly several things happening at one time: first, the 'ball, though whatever twist of fate, flying all over the place, knocking down a painting or two on its way. Second, our side breaking loose. Third, me flying hands-first into the window at the end of the corridor and shattering it into a million little pieces.

Result? As the surgeon said, I was a lucky bastard. The piece of glass lodged in my left wrist stopped millimetres from a major blood vessel and some nerves. My parents were less happy about the whole story. And none of the girls ever went to a party with any of us again. Which is a shame, some of them were fairly sweet.

Length? A bit short of an inch.
(Wed 2nd Jan 2008, 17:56, More)