Over the past four months I have had my identity stolen by a migrant worker from Nevada, my car and all of its contents ripped off by meth heads from Springfield and, unbelievably, my beloved cat taken by one of the neighborhood’s homeless. All of them happened in rapid succession and have caused me the strife and the headache of hours of phone calls and paperwork along with hundreds of dollars in fees needed to get my life back together. Now, I’m not a mark or a rube, or a mark-ass rube, as these things can and do happen to anyone (or maybe they keep their cat indoors). Rather, I consider myself a victim of circumstance; a circumstance that has perpetuated disloyalty and ill-will between man and has kept me from trusting anyone to even hold the pickles that I scrape off my cheeseburgers.
I’m not going to waste these column inches preaching to you from my soapbox about why you should never steal. I’m no square; I’ll admit to lifting my fair share of merchandise. I mean, it’s awful tempting when you’re broke and starving and the deli in the Safeway is located right next to the exit. But there are right and wrong ways of going about the act of theft. You have to remember that these are real people that are being ripped off. These people work hard for their money and, living in the materialistic society that we do, cherish their hard-earned possessions. So when some corner-cutting low-life tries to earn himself an easy payday, they’re taking more than just valuables; they’re taking someone’s time and effort and even their pride. But be it karma, poetic justice or whatever you want to call it, what goes around does come around, and in the end everybody gets what they deserve.
For example, a particularly doggish acquaintance of mine would routinely gloat about his nasty habit of stealing cash from his friends and roommates. He would go on about how he would boost cash out of purses at parties and heist tip money off dressers and fistfuls of quarters out of change jars. Naturally, everybody soon caught on and he has since been excommunicated from most of his social circles and has been in dire straights in trying to find someone to live with next year. Moral of the story: Don’t be an asshole and put your friends’ money over your friends – because you’re going to lose both.
To be fair, stealing can be an exhilarating and fine art to master. When it is done right, meaning that it is done to those who deserve it, it can rake in capital gains without victimizing innocent people. To large multinational conglomerates (starts with a “W”, ends in an “al-Mart), theft isn’t something that takes a large chunk out of their paycheck and ego; it’s a minor nuisance that they refer to as “shrinkage.” They rake in billions of dollars a year by exploiting small rural economies, so what’s the harm in taking a little of it back by shrinking some of its inventory?
Still, the law does not look favorably upon any type of shoplifting and there is only so much merchandise that can fit under your shirt. And maybe you have a tremendous drug habit and need to make a significant cash withdrawal. Your obvious answer then is to hold up the corner liquor store. Wrong. You’re going to go to jail. Don’t be an idiot and get the police involved, just rob a stash house instead. A drug mover is not going to be stupid enough to call the cops over to a house filled with bricks and cooking supplies, but they will be packing heat, so you better run fast. Oh, and if anybody ever catches you, you don’t know me.
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