AMATEUR CRIME LIFE WITH PEER PRESSURE

My life in amateur crime began in 5th grade.

If you were going to hang with the cool kids, you had to show you belonged.

One test was shoplifting at the local Payless.

It was an anchor store at Pony Village, the biggest shopping mall on the west coast between Seattle and San Francisco right in North Bend, Oregon.

Pony Village wasn’t mall rat territory for me, not when my dad had an office there, not when a junior high teacher moonlighted as a sales gun in a men’s fashion store.

But it was a destination just the same.

Some of my friends hung out together. They said they passed the test.

If wanted to hang out with them now, I needed to pass the test, first. I had to steal something.

So a group went to Pony Village and got to work.

Some kids lifted friendship rings off the counter when the clerk turned to help another kid.

My big score was a small folding notebook for seventy-nine cents. I was a writer then, too.

I slipped it under my arm inside my coat.

My observer checked to make sure I took something. When he checked, the notebook fell on the ground.

But I wasn’t busted.

We all met in the parking lot afterwards. I was so proud to belong, to pass.

It didn’t last.

Hang Up My Coat?

I put the notebook in my coat pocket, feeling like I could write something important in it.

If I got the chance.

I went home, tossed my coat on my bed, and thought nothing of it.

My mom hung my coat up. Instead of yelling at me to hang my coat up, she did it.

Something was fishy.

The next thing I saw she was holding the notebook and asking, “Where did this come from?”

We were a tight family like that, needing to explain things when asked.

“Randy gave it to me.”

He was the kingpin.

Then it was my dad’s turn.

“Randy gave you a notebook? Is that right? Did he give everyone a notebook?”

He called Randy’s dad and asked.

I saw him nodding his head. He gave me the phone.

Randy’s dad was screaming at him about the notebook and smacking him around.

I could hear the kid cry harder with each swing. And I couldn’t take it.

A Quick Confession

I learned who I was that evening.

I wasn’t the guy who let his pal get his ass whipped on my account.

So I handed the phone back crying and said, “It’s my notebook. I stole it from Payless. Make him stop.”

Since it was a groundbreaking confession I wasn’t sure what to expect, but from what I just heard, I braced for the same.

To my surprise I didn’t get hammered at home. Why? Because it was ‘teach the kid a lesson’ time.

I rode with my silent father down to Pony Village and met the manager. Mr. Northrup was the dad of one of my friends.

I’d been to his house to play.

Now he looked at me like I was a thief. I knew I’d never set foot in his house again.

My dad explained why we were there; I explained what I’d done.

All good, right? Time to go home?

Then the old man said, “You do with him what you think is right.”

What? We’re not on the same side? I’m not getting my wrist gently slapped?

Mr. Northrup went through the options, from call the police and go ‘downtown’, to nothing.

What he settled on was a lifetime ban from Pony Village. In fifth grade.

But it didn’t sink in. I heard I was banned from Payless, the scene of the crime.

The next day after school I went to Jantzen Music and bought a forty-five, “I Fought The Law And The Law Won” by the Bobby Fuller Four.

It was the second record I ever bought. This was the first. I spanned most of human experience between the two.

I had it playing when my dad got home that night.

“Where’d you get this?”

“From the music story.”

“At the mall?”

“Yes.”

“You’re banned from the mall and every store in it. They don’t want shoplifters.”

There I was, on the cusp of expanding my horizons with the rest of the delinquents who worked the mall, and I was out. Disqualified. Banned.

No amateur crime soundtrack for me.

Amateur Crime Lesson Learned?

I’d disappointed my parents. I was more of a problem than my brothers.

Can you say Black Sheep?

Anytime I went to Pony Village I needed adult supervision.

Everyone planned to meet at the mall? Not me, not with my face on anyone’s mind.

My mom knew every state cop from her work with the DMV.

My dad knew them too. Some of them came from his hometown.

It didn’t take a village to raise me, just the idea of spies around every corner.

My folks wanted to know about their kids. This one wanted them to know less.

But there was no chance. They talked about older kids getting into trouble and embarrassing their families.

It was talk for everyone, but it landed harder on me.

I didn’t like the attention, didn’t want more, but I was more than pleased to learn my dad had other resources than beat my ass as a first response.

I learned my lesson well, until I got a ride home from football practice one night with a stop at the back of Payless and Pony Village. Where else?

I felt like I was upholding my end of the ban by not getting out of the backseat of a light blue Mustang.

“I’m just picking up some Shasta. There’s a few extra cases left out.”

Coming Soon: Amateur Crime Life, pt 2