Fess-up Friday–thievery edition – Hive and Nest

Things are getting off to a slow start this morning on account of me still being in bed. You see, it’s a snow day here in Austin. We got a whole inch of snow so naturally school was cancelled. To add insult to injury, we have a three day break starting Monday. That means my kids will not be at school again til next Thursday.

If I wanted them around I would homeschool them. Sheesh.

Today’s Fess-Up Friday edition has to do with theivery. Somehow the Sunday School lessons I heard as I was growing up never really sank in because I stole things all the time as a child. From pretty much everyone. Usually I stole candy from people (my mother can tell you all about the peanut butter cups I snuck from her stash. She’d make me sit at the table and write “I will not steal anymore” 500 times. Guess what! It didn’t work! I kept stealing peanut butter cups!)

When I was 12 I had an insensitive uncle tell me in the middle of a family reunion that it was time I needed to wear a bra. After I slithered out of the room and died under a rock, I begged one of my cousins to let me borrow her extra bra. I hated wearing it. I felt like a cat who’s been dressed in baby clothes. At the end of the day I could barely wait to rip it off, but I knew that if my uncle thought I needed a bra then probably other people did too. However there’s a fine line in the tween years between needing a bra and being teased because you’re wearing one without having anything to put in it. If I brought the subject up to my mother, a very buxom woman, I figured she would cackle at the thought of me needing a bra and ask all of our gathered relatives for their opinion on the subject.

I’m sure it would have turned out differently, but in my pubescent mind I could only see the disasters lurking in a scenario involving my mother and my breasts.

So I decided I would have to buy a bra myself. Only I had no money due to the fact that I spent my allowance every week on donuts, gum and chocolate. My only option appeared to be theft.

As I said, I was a good Mormon girl (“good” only if you graded on a curve including my non-member friends like Elaine Fielder who was already smoking her mother’s cigarettes) but stealing something didn’t really bother me too much.

I headed down to the mall and tried on bras until I found a couple that I liked. And I stole them. Hangers and all.

Eventually when my conscience kicked in a couple of years later I felt terrible. But not before I’d stolen more bras and some Lee Press-on Nails.

How about you? Have you ever stolen anything? What was the worst thing?