Petty Crimes And Teenage Years

I never committed any petty crimes: Not because I was afraid that I'd be punished if I had been caught, but tbecause hey never appealed to me.

Two petty crimes that appeal to teenagers and others going through adolescence are minor vandalism and shoplifting, also know as the five-finger discount.

The closest I came to committing minor vandalism came one Saturday evening during the spring of 1968, when I was in eighth grade. Three friends and I were out and about. We were walking because we didn't want to ride our bikes in the dark and because we didn't have our driver's licenses.

One of us -- not me -- threw a rock at a street light. As soon as he threw it , we all ran.

The street light didn't break.

As for shoplifting, I knew one man who did it at a five-and-dime store when he was in junior high school. I call him J., for that is his first initial. He not only did it; he bragged about it.

J. ended up a loud, obnoxious man and an alcoholic. He was puny in his youth; that might explain his attitude later in his life.

He was an accountant and then a day trader. He now says he's retired.

I haven't seen or talked with him in six years. To me, that's no great loss.

He also married one of the more popular and better-souled women in our high school class. That was when she had the reform/save this guy attitude toward her boyfriends and lovers.

Sometimes I think less of her because she had sexual intercourse with J. It happened when they were married, but ...

I still think well of her, but I let that one little thing about her bug me, however slightly.