Taboo Word 9/13/16
When I was seen, I wasn’t in a good place. But I’m already getting ahead of myself. I have two brothers, both younger than myself. Every time we went to a store with my mother, my brothers and I were in competition with each other, to see who could bring home the best, and the most stuff – without paying for it.
There was a little variety store in a town near us, and my mother went there often, though I don’t know why. I cannot remember a single thing that she would bring home from the store. Now this store was your typical five and dime store. After you came in the door, straight ahead of you was the cashier, and an aisle went down each side of the store. There was a break between the two aisles, and after the break, on the left side, was where the toys were on display.
It was like heaven to us, when we were younger, and if my mother bought us anything, it was a rare occasion. But we always came home with more than what my mother actually paid. Where we hid things, I have no idea. When we got home, we would gather in my room (Why was it always MY room?), and compare the things that we each brought home. Back then, we didn’t think about the fact that we were stealing something. We were just having some fun, and bringing home stuff was like a game to us.
In another town about 12 miles away was famous baseball museum, and playing field as well. But I couldn’t tell you, to save my life now, the name of that baseball field. But the National Hall of Fame Game is played there every year. During the summer, we would go up and down the street, just trying to find a parking space. This was difficult during the summer, because there were so many tourists, they just clogged up the entire street from end to end.
About midway down the street, there was a department store, and it even had stairs down to a lever level. The lower level was where the 45 rpm records were available. The paperback books were also down on that level. At that time, I was an avid reader, and would devour two to three books a week. It was hard to find books that I was interested in, so it took me some time, browsing through the books, trying to find a couple that I hadn’t already read, or even wanted to read. It was also the same while hunting through the records. There seemed to be so many popular songs during the 70’s, it was difficult to make your selections. When my mother came to round us up, our ‘treasure hunting’ for that visit was over.
One afternoon, the fatal afternoon, the inevitable happened. I had collected a variety of things, including books and records. I went back upstairs to find my mother, as it was the end of summer and my mother was buying our new school clothes. A friend of the family worked in that store. On this memorable evening, I eventually noticed that she was trailing me around the store. She was onto me! What do I do? I moved around, trying to find a place to hide and ditch everything I had on me. If I didn’t have anything on me, I wouldn’t get into trouble. Right? Wrong, very wrong. I managed to get a stack of cartons between me and this woman, and I pulled everything out from under my shirt, and there she was. “No, no, no you can’t do that. She collared me and dragged me off to the manager’s office. They then paged my mother, and my heart sank lower than my heels, I think.
When my mother showed up, they told her I had been caught shoplifting, and I was not allowed in that store alone again. You would have thought she was the one who had been caught. She took my shoplifting personally. My mother was a narcissist, and everything was about her, and how she was affected by such affronts. She hustled us out the back door, after buying her purchases. After that night, though, I was the one who felt embarrassed. As soon as we entered the store, even while staying right at my mother’s side, the manager would follow us all around the store, every time we stopped to look at something, he stopped and waited,
I did learn my lesson, although I don’t know if my brothers did. I never took a thing after that night, either something in a store, nor from anyone else. After coming to know more of the Bible, I had an even stronger determination to taking anything, ever. If I found something that someone had obviously forgotten, or dropped, if there was no one there to turn it over to, I left it right where I found it. I would expect the same in return. That way, I would find my lost item, and stop being in panic mode, looking everywhere.
The moral of the story? I learned to never again shoplift or otherwise take something that did not belong to me. I couldn’t embarrass my mother like that again. I was always the one to pay the price, actually about three times the price, by being subjected to my mothers narcissism. I was going to try to avoid that, at all costs.
In case you haven’t figured it by now, this post was written without using the taboo word of the day.
You can see today’s taboo word below. Visit Eric, author of the All In A Dad’s Work blog and creator of the challenge, for details on participating.
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But my chair did not come
My voice alone was not enough 
At the stop, to my surprise
Through The Clouds 