the littlest shoplifter
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 4:25PM Saturday, Father Bird and I found ourselves alone with our baby boy for a couple of hours. In the deafening silence, the three of us looked at each other, shrugged, and went to Belk to buy Father Bird some new jeans.
And, my goodness! What a difference there is between one child and four, and how quickly, how very quickly, we forgot. He just...orbited us while we sifted through the stacks of jeans for the right combination of waist and length sizes. He poked around and made little chirpy toddler-comments about everything from the lights to the mannequins (dummies, Father Bird told him. Don't teach him that word, I hissed.) There was no whining, no poking, no shoving, no fighting. We kept one eye each on him and, incredibly, that was all it took.
When we left the store we zipped him up tight against the autumn breeze in his little hoodie jacket. His hands were buried deep in his warm fleecy pockets.
After we had collected the other three children and the melee had started up again, he pulled his hands out of his pockets. "What is dese?" he said.
I goggled at him as he slid them on his fingers and showed me what they were good for.
Click, click, click! went his little plastic-covered fingertips.
Now, I know all those stories that start "I picked up a pack of gum in the store one day and slipped it in my pocket and my mother taught me a lesson about shoplifting I'll never forget..."
And if he'd stolen something Belk cared about, something they don't give away when you buy clothing, something valuable, I might have tried to make a point of the whole thing. If he weren't two-and-a-half I might have tried anyway.
Today may be the day I put his little foot on the road to a dismal life of crime.
It was that or pry them out of these chubby baby hands. I think I'll take the life of crime.
~MB~
Reader Comments (1)
So cute. His little chubby hands are so darling. And I love that out of allllll the stuff that I'm sure Belk has to offer, he took the most forgotten. Cute story. I can actually hear his voice in my head.