I am not advocating shoplifting, but we all did something dumb as a kid. What is your story?
Me, I was 2 years old and at Tim Hortons with my mother and a family friend. This was almost 50 years ago and Tim Hortons still had servers back then, so there was a cutout in the counter for them to go in and out. The donuts are in racks behind the counter. I had had a chocolate donut paid for by my mother, and apparently I decided I wanted another, and I was so little I nipped behind the counter when nobody was there, helped myself to another, and was only discovered when my mother noticed me polishing off a different donut. She did pay for it and everyone laughed, I was just little and it was funny. Sadly the quality of Tim Hortons donuts has gone way downhill over the intervening years, as older Canadians know.
I used to put things in my vest pocket when I worked at Walmart and “accidentally” take them home. I was a twenty-something but I fucking hated that place and felt like I deserved more.
Oh, man, I used to steal all the shit from Walmart when I worked there. I’d go to the freezer section, grab something like a small box of hot pockets, and head to the break room directly for my break, straight skipping the register. Plus just, like, normal shoplifting, because fuck them
and felt like I deserved more.
Most likely true.
I’m told it was mother’s heart.
I read a YA book about someone methodically planning, then stealing a computerized chess board (a big deal in the 80’s/early 90’s). They recorded people saying different words for the audio message telling the clerk to lock themself in the BATHROOM, timed it out, etc. While this obviously wasn’t me, it always stuck with me, and I somehow got secondhand guilty from it…
According to my mom, the calcium off her teeth.
“My dentition was so great, but then you came.”
I remember stealing small toys from dentists and pediatricians when I was little. Like, you were allowed to pick one toy after the appointment and I took two or something?
Unfortunately, I’ve also stolen from friends of mine. I was around 7 or 8 and wanted a Tamagotchi real bad but couldn’t afford one because I didn’t have/get any allowance and my parents couldn’t just buy me one since we were tight on money growing up. Ff to us visiting friends and I notice 15€ on my friend’s night desk which I just stashed.
Same day, I go to my mother, all proud, and proclaim “Look, I only need another 5€ to get a Tamagotchi!” When she asked where I’d gotten the money from, I confessed, realised what I did was stupid, and apologised to his mother over the phone. I remember crying real bad and promising I’d never do something like that ever again; she was really cool about it and wasn’t angry at all which was nice. Felt awful regardless.
I did end up getting a Tamagotchi for my birthday so yay?
Kids just do dumb shit sometimes. Nothing to feel bad about. You did the right thing.
I found a porno mag my sisters boyfriend had
Does software piracy count?
Ah who am I kidding, of course it doesn’t.
You wouldn’t download a car…
Wait… Yes I would.
I downloaded more ram, does that count???
I saw a grey snubnose pistol toy somebody left lying around at a rental shop when I was like… 5? It was exactly like the one I had, but mine was green and I wanted the realistic grey. Felt so bad about it once I got home that I hid it and never touched it, and then it eventually went missing.
M:tG cards back in the late 90s.
There was a local comic book store called (no shit) The Funk Pit, which kept the mid tier cards stored in 3 ring binders full of those plastic card sleeves, and common cards stored in an “Inch Box” where they just charged you by the height of your stack. My friend and I would occasionally sneak a more expensive card out of the binder and slip it into our stack from the Inch Deck that cost $1.25.
There’s no way we were the first or last to do it, but I felt kinda shitty about it for years after.
My mom’s heart.
I hope this is figurative but I’m scared it’s literal.
Yes it’s figurative. Fortunately I wasn’t a baby Mortal Kombat contestant.
A bottle from mad dog 20/20 from a gas station. I was like 15. Me and some buddies wanted to get drunk, none of us had fake IDs, and the weed dealer who normally supplied the booze wasn’t answering his phone. 5 of us went in, my buddy Brian volunteered to be tribute, and he grabbed a case of beer and just went to walk out the door with it. While the clerk was distracted dealing with that, we shoved mad dog in our pockets, and then went to the register with sodas. Brian dropped the case of beer and booked it. It was a very smooth operation.
Didn’t steal anything else for years, until I was like 18, and we were so poor that my mom and I started shoplifting out of genuine necessity, while waiting on her disability to kick in.
I’m sorry you had to go through that. Shoplifting with your kid is a different level.
Yeah, hunger genuinely sucks. A lot.
We’re okay now, though :)
It was a red and green plastic pencil sharpener shaped like a dachshund. You stuck your pencil in his butt. I stole it from a desk in Sunday School. I stole from God.
God wanted you to steal that sharpener. Such an unholy object does not belong in Sunday School.
A tiny dinosaur eraser when I was like 6 or 7?
In kindergarten, a small suction-cup hourglass. The suction cup has already decomposed, but the rest is fine.
Yes, I still have it.
Unlike the pony from MLP (Twilight Sparkle) I had to “borrow” forever to someone else from family because I was a boy and had no business having a “girl toy”. I also stole it in kindergarten. It was small, hard plastic figure coated with some plush-like coating. It was worn off at bottom of the legs.I still remember it, I didn’t forget. Ironic. What I stole was stolen from me.
In first grade? There was this little Hot Wheels style car that could transform into a robot man. I loved that little thing. Top favorite toy in the classroom.
Took it home one day. I was too afraid to play with it, so I just stuffed it into the box with the other toy cars. I was also too afraid to return it after a while. I still have it, and the guilt over taking this thing lives rent-free in my head.
When your kid goes to first grade, take it in, donate it, and tell the story.