Been Caught Stealing (Comedy)

Have you ever shoplifted anything?

Ever been caught?

I have. Sort of. Not exactly. But also, yes.

I lived in Regina for four years as a preteen, from grade five to grade eight, 1985 to 1988. It was a time that was as formative as it was felonious. The golden Gen X latchkey kid era, when children were free-range animals with cable TV and cigarettes.

Recently, I was back in Regina on business and decided to take a nostalgic stroll through one of the most hallowed hang outs of my youth: Victoria Square Mall.

It was somewhat surreal, as these time-travelling excursions can be. The bones of the mall were the same, but much had changed. Safeway was still Safeway, but everything else was different. The Zellers was now a Jysk. Bi-Rite Drugs had become a Dollar Store. The old record shop, where I’d once debated the artistic merits of ‘Slippery When Wet,’ was now a jewelry store.

As I wandered through the mall, I remembered being about 12-years-old. I came from a so-called good family. Suburban, middle class, “respectable” people. But like most Gen X kids, I was raised by television and benign neglect. I flirted with the boundaries of right and wrong like I was doing R&D for The Kingpin.

Back then I was deep into my skid phase. I wore denim with an Iron Maiden back patch, hair that said “I cut this myself, with safety scissors and spite.” I had a rat’s tail at the back that dangled like a tiny middle finger to society. I smoked cigarettes. I loitered. I was Regina’s tiniest dirtbag.

That said, I was pretty soft as far as any truly serious delinquency went. But at some point, my friends and I discovered shoplifting. It was like learning you had a superpower. Want that Mad Magazine? Grab it. Fancy a New York Seltzer? Reach in the cooler and take it. (New York Seltzer was a thing in the 80s, don’t ask). You didn’t need your allowance; money had become optional. To quote Jane’s Addiction’s ‘Been Caught Stealing’: “When I want something and I don’t want to pay for it. And if I get by — it’s mine. Mine all mine.”

In shoplifting, like poker, there are tells; those subtle signs someone’s about to steal. One classic move: when they’re pretending to browse but they’re staring at the cashier to see if they’ve been detected. Their hands are flipping through racks, but they’re not looking at the thing they’re shopping for.

As kids, we were so hilariously brazen that we didn’t have those tells. I’d walk into the store, saunter right up to the cooler, take out that seltzer, and then, to paraphrase Perry Farrell once more, I’d “walk right through the door,” strutting through the mall, taking fat swigs of seltzer.

When someone gets away with retail theft, they almost always come back. And when they come back enough, they eventually get caught.

So, of course, I got caught too.

Sort of.

The thing is, I wasn’t actually stealing when I was arrested for theft.

My friend Russ Desjardine’s house was a two-minute walk from the shopping centre. Strangely, for someone who’d bought a house so close by, Russ’ Dad hated the mall. Like it had personally wronged him somehow, maybe slept with his wife.

Every time we left Russ’ house, Mr. Desjardine would growl, “Jesus, I hope you guys aren’t going to that damn mall.”

Once, a group of us were riding our bikes to that damn mall and we were attacked by some older boys. Without provocation of any kind, these boys proceeded to assault my friends, throwing punches, violently knocking them off their bikes. I had been behind the group, so I was able to escape. I turned my bike around and pedaled as fast I could to get the closest adult I could think of; Mr. Desjardine, sitting in his house, a stone’s throw away. When I rang the doorbell, he answered and I tried to spit out, “Help! The guys are getting beaten up! Come quickly!”

He took one look at me and muttered, “That’s what you get for going to that damn mall.” And he shut the door in my face. (Thankfully, the older brother of one of my friends happened by and scared the bullies off).

The day I got caught shoplifting, or, more accurately, not shoplifting, Russ and I had wandered over after school. I had no ill intent. It wasn’t always a campaign of crime. It was the 80s. People hung out at malls. While I might normally steal anything that wasn’t bolted down, that day I had no such thought. I wanted to see if they had the new shipment of G.I. Joe figures in.

We wandered into Zellers, headed for the toy section, looking at the new wave of characters first spied in the Sears Christmas Wish catalogue. We wandered through the store, sometimes together, sometimes one of us would wander off to look at something specific.

Eventually, suppertime was nigh, so we started to walk back to the mall. As we crossed the threshold, leaving Zellers, a large man put a bear trap-like vice grip on each of our shoulders. “Security,” he said. “You’re under arrest for theft.”

I felt panic grip me, but also confusion. I had no idea what he was talking about. I hadn’t stolen anything. But one look at Russ and I could see that he was the culprit. Turned out, he had stolen a pack of Life Savers. A classic, but hardly a good enough candy to get arrested over. And worse: he had given me one, not thirty seconds earlier. I had unwittingly eaten the evidence. The literal fruit of the crime. Well, fruit-flavoured, anyway.

The store detective was a hulking guy who smoked like a chimney and may have been carved from a couch. He reminded me of Don Brodka, the floorwalker who catches Bart shoplifting in The Simpsons episode, ‘Marge Be Not Proud.’ He was big, scary, and unimpressed with thieving punk kids.

I was shitting my pants. Not metaphorically. I was calculating which street gang would claim me in juvie. Would I be currency? Would I have to fight someone on the first day? Would I even make it to jail or would my Dad just murder me?

I told the Zellers Don Brodka knockoff that I didn’t know what Russ had done and I hadn’t taken anything myself. But he didn’t believe me. He just snarled, “You were the lookout.”

He phoned my mom, which was the privileged white kid version of a plea deal. If my skin had been a few shades darker, there’s little doubt he would have called the police. My mom showed up, looking angry. I hadn’t technically stolen anything, but I still felt like I had. Because on any other day, I probably would have been getting that five-finger discount.

Back at home, I had to explain it all to my dad. I was officially banned from Zellers, threatened with a trespassing charge if I ever set foot in the store again. For some reason, Dad didn’t kill me. As an 80s parent that would have meant paying more attention than he had the bandwidth for. I was saved by apathy.

But lesson learned. That was the end of my shoplifting career.

Years later, in my late 20s, I became Don Brodka. Or rather, I became a Loss Prevention Investigator for The Hudson’s Bay Company at Midtown Plaza in Saskatoon. I was a floorwalker. A professional mall narc. Retail Batman. Whatever you want to call it. And ironically, The Bay owned Zellers, so I was working for the same company that had barred me from the premises.

Unlike my own humorless captor, I wasn’t out to punish. I was there to observe, deter, and, when necessary, gently escort sticky-fingered product liberators to the back room. Yes, I made arrests. But I wasn’t a jerk about it. I had empathy. Perspective. Some shoplifters were bored. Some were desperate, living in poverty or on drugs. Some were professionals who used elaborate super villain tech like baby strollers with trap doors. But some were just dumb kids doing dumb kid things. I had been them. I had tasted the forbidden Life Saver.

One day, I was working when I spotted two girls, about 12 years old. I knew they’d stolen some underwear, but I hadn’t seen quite enough to legally detain them. I followed them at a casual distance as they left The Bay and headed into Claire’s, the glitter-drenched jewel of mall tweenery. They watched the clerk, but they didn’t see me.

I observed them swiping earrings, bracelets, whatever sparkly nonsense they could stealthily cram into their pockets. When they exited Claire’s, I stepped up and arrested them, just as Big Brodka once did to me.

I brought the girls back to The Bay’s loss prevention office and locked them in the purgatory of our holding cell. I learned that one of the girls was living with the family of the other while her parents were overseas. Both of them looked like they were going to puke. They were terrified, on the verge of tears, out of their depth.

And in them, I saw 12-year-old me at Zellers in Vic Square Mall. I saw scared kids who had screwed up and were learning a lesson the hard way. Technically, I was supposed to call the police. But instead, I called the mother of the girl who had a reachable parent.

The mom showed up rage-flushed and vibrating. I thought she was going to strangle them both and make me an accessory to a double homicide. I took her aside and calmed her down. I explained that I was willing to let them off with a warning. They were scared out of their wits and I could guarantee her that their criminal career was done. She thanked me for the talk and the get out of jail free card, then took her little klepto misfits away.

My son is twelve now. The same age as those girls and the same age I was when I walked into Zellers and unknowingly became an accomplice to citrus-flavoured crime. At his age, I was roaming the streets with impunity, committing petty vandalism, a BMX between my legs, a Du Maurier dangling from my lips.

But kids are different these days. More supervised. Less feral. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever wander down the dark path; pocketing a Mars bar and walking right through the door with the quiet swagger of a 12-year-old John Dillinger.

And if he does? If he gets caught?

I’ll act angry. Disappointed. But I’ll remember. I’ll get it. Deep down I won’t care that much.

I’ll also know that this is how we learn about the world. I stole, I got caught. It was embarrassing. It was scary. And I learned that crime doesn’t pay. Not that I’m advocating for retail theft, but it was exactly the kind of experience kids need. These days, they don’t get much chance to screw up in the real world. They’re too supervised, too tracked, too online. We’ve traded scraped knees and bad decisions for screen time. But those little misadventures, the mistakes, the risks, the sweet, bubbly taste of a stolen New York Seltzer, they’re how we grow and learn.

So, if my son ever shoplifts something stupid and gets caught?

I’ll ground him to make the lesson stick. But I’ll be quietly proud that he put down the Nintendo and left the house, to seek fortune and adventure in the world.