True Confessions: Crime Pays

Kleptomaniac-at-large

In my late teens & early 20s, before becoming a serious photographer, I had been messing around with a small Ansco Cadet box camera from which the film was developed through the local drug store. The store required the usual — name, address, phone number — to be filled in on the processing envelope’s receipt.

Having left the store, I started making a regular startling discovery behind my right ear — the ballpoint pen I had used to fill out the receipt. The same happened in banks & other places where I had to sign or fill out anything.

As the pens began to pile up, I was faced with a moral dilemma: to fess up & beg for mercy for my crime or keep on doing it. Well, I’m a psychologist, I rationalized, so I’d conduct a study of the results focusing on answering the question: “How will those losing the pens react?” An informal sort-of Candid Camera without the camera.

& so, I launch my criminal career. Consciously aware of what I was doing, I would walk out with pen after pen, quite pleased with myself. The results of my study were fairly consistent: about a third of my victims would be oblivious to the theft; another third would be very direct & ask for their pen back, which I would immediately give back with an apology.

The third in the middle was the funniest. They would begin a search for their missing pen, looking around, checking shirt pockets, maybe even muttering something about their missing pen, but unless they were direct & asked for it, I would play dumb & walk out with their pen behind my ear.

My guestimate of this last third is that about ½ were unaware of what had happened to their pen & the other ½ were acting like they didn’t know but did not have the nerve to ask me directly for their pen. These, I allowed to suffer & they paid for their lack of assertiveness by the loss of their pens.

This game has entertained me for over ½ a century & is still played whenever I have the opportunity. I do it only with corporate rich type victims, not the little grocer or cobbler who’s barely scraping out a living. I do have a conscience, unlike my corporate victims.

Chains eventually appeared in post offices, banks, & other places restricting my ease of access to the pens, so apparently, I was not the only one conducting this study. It seems there was also a period a decade or 2 ago when pens were used somewhat like business cards, so that was a completely innocent period, but otherwise, I have reverted to my life of crime whenever the opportunity presents itself.

With shame, however, I must admit, there have been a couple of occasions when I’ve had to buy pens. Having carelessly been returning pens for a period of time over the last couple of years without replacing the ones I was using up, I’m correcting this shortcoming. The last couple of weeks have been a bonanza! Need a pen?

© Vytas Stoskus, 2023 www.stoskus.net

For guilt-alleviating addendum, please read on.

This will ease the mountains of GUILT which I’m sure are accumulating in your soul for not pitching in & helping. It will also reduce the amassing guilt around issues of greed, injustice, or whatever sins you may not care to even think about let alone discuss. Fear not, all will be forgiven.

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