Thursday, June 19, 2008

Theft and the inevitable consequences

I wrote a post or two ago about inappropriate crushes and now I have an inappropriate crush on a girl who works in a popular department store - now, this isn't due to any classic Miss Switzerland beauty, it's because the way she wears her blue eye shadow is really hot. Anyway, the down side to this is to see her, I have to walk past the man on the door - now, this is Tasmania, so he doesn't inspect your bags on the way in or out, but he does possess some shifty eyes. So, my lunch break goes, look for blue eye shadow girl, hope inevitable day doesn't come when man on door pulls me up, and then, when inside chain store, wander around, and look at wrestling figures. This is another tricky act, since I'm 29, and it can be a little dodgy wandering around the toy department. Maybe the man on the door will think that's my go. I used to know that Thursday night at Coles was "If you have a melon in your hand on Thursday night you are single" night, so I hope holding a Lashley figure isn't the pedo equivalent.

All of which you probably don't need to know, but it's a blog, what do you expect? So anyway, I was taking in all of my lunch time routine yesterday, blue eye shadow girl wasn't there, neither was shifty eyed door man, but my other nemesis, book lady was, so I wandered round to the CD section, and I saw something I've never seen before - a kid not only stealing something in classic look left, look right, under the coat style, but getting royally busted by a girl in a black top. I can honestly say I've heard "security to aisle 3", but I've never seen anyone get nailed so quickly. And I'm staring right at this kid, and he has, in his hand, the Will.I.Am solo album. Now, I'm not a criminal mastermind but surely that's only 50c by now? I so wanted to tell the kid, re: the CD, something along the lines of "you got it from your Momma!", but I couldn't frame it quite right. Then I started thinking "maybe I could get dragged into this as a witness, I don't want to spend time in court saying yes your honour, it was Will.I.Am, no, it definitely wasn't Wyclef, but I can see why you'd think that. So I backed off, and left security to work it's magic. The last word I heard either of them utter was "profit", which i don't think was a great negotiating tactic on behalf of the black T-shirt girl. Appealing about a loss of profit hasn't really worked for the RIAA, it aint working for popular Australian department stores.

I'm not an expert (again) on store security, but 20 minutes later, I was at a popular coffee emporium, and there was that kid again, free as a bird. I guess he'd talked his way out of it or been able to break the less than terrifying grip of the girl in the black T-shirt, but I did wonder if the sheer fact that he was stealing a Will.I.Am solo album was somehow punishment enough, like some desperate dare or group punishment. Did he do it to impress blue eye shadow girl? He better not have. How do you go back to your friends and say "look what I stole, an album that's sold 28 copies! Let's go back and get Rob Mills Up All Night!" - I'd also love to say that this somehow made me a better person. I always find some thefts, like the hungry man stealing a loaf of bread, quite sad, but this kid didn't really teach me anything, he was well dressed, seemingly well fed, and was just nicking something for the sake of it. However, at this point in my internal monologue, I realised I'm turning slowly into John Laws, and I stopped thinking about it.

Although, I do plan to keep you posted on blue eye shadow girl.

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