French Fancy confessed to stealing from her employers and justified it by the extra unpaid hours worked and often using her own postage stamps. Okay, so it was only an envelope here and there and yes, she's probably put a lot more in than she's ever taken out.
It made me think about my own activities and, as the challenge was there to confess all...or at least something, I thought I'd do just that, it being Sunday and all!
Between the ages of 5 and 10 when my total gross income was zero, I stole enough to open a shop. If it could be rolled up in a towel after swimming, it was mine. I even sneaked into swimming. I also sneaked into the cinema. In fact, the only place I didn't sneak into was school.
I once scaled a drain-pipe to break into a factory and relieve them of thousands of packets of 'Spangles'. They caught up with me because I had neatly wrote my name and address on the ink jotter with a pen I was considering taking with me from their office. All they had to do was follow the trail anyway...the spangles were everywhere.
From ages 10 to 22...as you were, but bigger stuff. The towel was totally inadequate and I couldn't afford most things on the wage I was earning.
Ages 22 to...let me see now, how old am I? Oh yes!, 57...NOT A SINGLE THING unless you have me on camera.
1974 was the year I found out about repentance and joined the LDS Church. I'm squeaky clean and not even the Catholics can get me for nicking their communion wine back in '72 (a good year)!
The Church of England can Protestant all they like, I am not giving back the threppence I took back out of the collection box. Well, if threepenny bits were still around, I might...seeing as it's only about 1.5 pence current money.
Actually, I did try and put things right but only 'Woolies' were still around and it was too big a company to get to the right person. It didn't seem right to walk up to one of the till girls and say "can you please work out how much 40 Mars bars, 200 Dairy Milks and 20 packets of whatever were in 1960, and add it to this packet of chewing gum please"?
Even 'Woolies' have gone now, bless 'em!
Shortly after being baptised, I visited old friends in Leeds. I breezed through the open door and up the stairs into the flat where we all used to hang out. There was no one at home so I waited a while. Then it dawned on my that the decor had changed and the photos had nothing to do with my friends. There was a rent book and a lot of money on the table in the kitchen. I froze.
Not only was I trespassing and the occupants could come back any second, but there was money on the table at a time when church mice were richer than me. My legs felt like jelly, I became very hot, my heart was pumping and I knew I was in a delicate situation.
I ran faster than if it was Potiphar's wife sitting on that table, and down those stairs I tumbled into the refreshing afternoon air.
Since then, I've never been tempted by anything that didn't belong to me.
Bev has just reminded me of the pens I bring home from work. Do they count? I only have a few hundred.
She also reckons that someone from cyberspace will come knocking on my door soon.
tbc...
This was funny! Do you you feel better now that it's all out in the open? :)
ReplyDeleteI've always been an annoyingly good girl (think Hermione Granger.) When I was in the early days of college though, before I decided that I'm just not a drinker, I was a drinker. My lifelong friend introduced me to the bar scene.
One time, I was drinking an expensive girlie drink, and my friends wanted to leave. I told them I was not done and I didn't want to leave such an expensive drink. My friend said, "You get to keep the glass, silly. Why do you think those drinks are so expensive?" Naive, I said, "Oh really? Cool!"
Over the next year my glass collection grew. I was quite proud of all the beautiful wine glasses, brandy snifters, frosted glasses and beveled crystal I had amassed.
Then one day I was reading our local paper. I saw the name of a girl I knew in the "arrests" section of the paper. She had gotten busted for stealing glasses valued at $36 from one of the bars I had been to. I was shocked! That cured my naivete right quick like! I looked at all my glasses and wondered how in the world I could return them all since I couldn't even remember which bar had "given" them to me, as part of my drink price, cough cough.
Luckily over the course of my adult life, my husband's children ended up breaking every single one of those glasses while washing dishes.
No evidence. Whew!
Hi Randi
ReplyDeleteConfession is good for the soul...even for the second time around.
How could you fall for that one?
There are skeletons in every cupboard, aren't there?
My 'collections' included roadside repair lanterns (the old red ones that had to be lit) and park litter bins. After two, they began to secure them properly.
Thank goodness those days are gone (but it brings a smile looking back on it).
ps, we had our summertime walk.