The first time I did it, I felt guilty.
But after that initial experience, I threw my morals to the wind and gave myself up to the world of bulking.
It began in high school; my friend and I would drive down to the local 24-hour grocery store and head straight to the back. Past the produce department and near the seafood display were bins upon bins of candy. We looked at these bins and figured it wouldn’t hurt anyone if we took just one.
“Do you think this is stealing?” my friend would say, dumping fistfuls of bridge mix into her mouth.
“No, I think it’s more like sampling,” I would reply.
And I held firm to that belief, all the way into college.
My sophomore year I lived in a house with two girls. This house, while in a sketchy neighborhood, had one very redeeming quality: It was about a block from a grocery store. We liked this fact because it made the idea of toting groceries back to our house in the winter seem bearable. It also created leeway for us to satisfy any cravings we could possibly have without much travel time.
The best part of this store, however, was the bulk candy section. The bins of delicious chocolatey goodness were surrounded by a wide assortment of sour candy, and of course a fully stocked bin of the Tootsie roll (my personal favorite). My roommates and I frequented the bins. In the evenings, when procrastinating the work we had to do, we’d head to the store and nosh on the candy.
Often, we’d catch similar groups of girls, huddled around the bins, sneaking piece by piece of candy into their mouths, in hopes that no one was looking.
The funny thing about this candy, however, was that it was really cheap. Like dirt-cheap. It would have cost us nothing but pocket change to cover the cost, and yet we felt the need to stand in the store and sheepishly stuff our faces as discreetly as possible.
That summer, while home, my mom and I went grocery shopping. While weaving down the aisles, I came across a very familiar area – the bulk section. I plopped a piece of candy from one of the bins into my mouth.
My mom looked at me like I had just punched a baby in the face.
“You’re going to get arrested for that!” she said.
“No, I’m not. They don’t mind. They put them here in bins so that you can try them,” I replied.
A very stern look came across her face, and in a very motherly tone she told me that I was stealing.
Initially, I didn’t think much about this statement, but after a few more trips to the bulk bins, I began to question the activity in which I was participating. Was I actually stealing? Would this be considered a crime? Or was my mom just being the paranoid person I knew her to be?
I couldn’t really decide, but regardless, it did make me consider my morals.
While, generally, I find myself to be a person who can easily differentiate between good or bad, and right or wrong, sometimes I find myself in a bit of a gray area. And, what are you supposed to do in this gray area? Do you choose the side that is just a bit more black, or just a bit more white?
More and more, I find myself pondering this question. The older we get, the more we create this need to establish clear lines, the type of morals on which you can rely whenever in doubt. Personally, I’m not sure I have any.
When do we establish these morals? Do they come from our parents or our environment? Or does it not matter either way, because we would undoubtedly lose any sense of them in college?
So many questions, to which I can supply no answers.
All I know is that I’ve decided that in the future, whenever I plan to ravage the bulk bins, I’ll purchase a few pieces just for good measure.
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