Thief

 Mom is in the living room knitting intricate patterns for some item of clothing. Outside the window, an ice cream truck trills its usual cheerful tune. It's a sound I have grown to love. Charlie, the ice cream man, had arrived on his weekly round. I put down my train set. 

“Mom, can I buy a cone?” Mom glances up from her knitting,

 “Ok, take it out of the vase, but only a penny cone, mind you.” I get up from the floor and walk out to the hallway. The old, semi-circular, dark brown hall table stands in the corner next to the stairs leading to the upstairs bedrooms. Sitting on top of the table is the black house telephone. The center of the phone dial reads Giffnock1851. Beneath the phone on a shelf between the tabletop and the floor stands an ugly old, cracked flower vase with a faded flower pattern. The vase is used as a sort of bank. After using the phone, the money to pay for our calls is placed in the vase so there won’t be a shortfall when the phone bill arrives.  

    I take the receptacle, turn it over, and a three-penny piece falls into my hand instead of a penny falling out. I look down at the coin in my hand. I feel a pang of guilt, but the responsibility is partially laid aside as a vision of the much larger ice cream cone helps me make up my mind. I stroll out to Charlie’s van and ask for a three-penny cone.

 “Do you want raspberry sauce on the top”?

 “Yes, thanks, Charlie”? I hold the cone carefully and shuffle back into the house. Mom looks up from her knitting and glances at the cone with a slightly furrowed frown.

 “Is that a penny cone”?

 “Yes!” I answer, lying to my mother for the first time in my life. That lie has magical properties, as the ice cream turns to vinegar in my mouth. Unfortunately, while I feel guilty, the feeling isn't strong enough. Even before the vinegar taste had fully diluted, my mind wakes up that getting money for self-indulgence is easy. I must try again. Once I set off down the road of thievery, I find it easier to steal. I begin by taking money from my mom’s purse without thinking about the morality of my actions. I am, however, thinking about the culinary delights that await me in Kelly's sweetie shop.

    Kelly’s sweetie shop sells lots of goodies. The shop is nothing more than an ancient hut with two sliding windows in front. Everyone, both children and adults, calls it Kelly's because Mr. Kelly owns it. He's about as ancient as the hut itself. Leading my desired sweetie list (In Scotland, candies were always called sweeties) is a Duncan’s Walnut Whip concoction. It is shaped like a small chocolate mountain with ridges swirling around it like a helter-skelter. The inside contains some type of imitation cream and resting on the bottom is half a walnut. It isn’t just the taste I love. It's the joy of biting off the thick chocolate mountain top. Next, I use my tongue as a kind of shovel to scoop out the creamy center. Finally comes the challenge of trying to remove the walnut piece using only my tongue. If I can dislodge the walnut in front of my friends, my cool status will undoubtedly rise. Aside from Duncan's walnut whip, there's a myriad of other sweeties in the store. Any Scottish folk reading this, who grew up in the 1950s, will immediately be transported back to their childhood when I mention Jelly Babies, Dolly Mixtures, McGowan’s Highland Toffee, Smasher Bars, Gob Stoppers, Liquorice Allsorts, and of course Penny Dainties.

     As I progress in my new thieving profession, I take greater risks, not so much to satisfy my need for candy but to satisfy the adrenaline rush I receive from the dangers of being caught. I will continue to raid the vase to help my need for sweeties over the next two years. Then one day, I decide it's time to stop raiding the vase, not because I've grown a conscience; no, the reason is more straightforward than that. On a large mahogany sideboard in the living room stood my mother’s prized possession. A beautiful silver tea set. Well, according to my mother, it was beautiful. The tea set comprised a silver sugar bowl on the left and a silver milk jug on the right. In between the two pieces stood a tall silver teapot. Supporting the three pieces lay a silver tray decorated with silver filigree. All four items were thoroughly polished every week. I never really understood why. One thing I do know, the containers were never contaminated with sugar, milk, or tea. It was the teapot that captured my interest. Not for its esthetic beauty, but because my mother used the receptacle to save ten shillings and one-pound notes for monthly household expenses. Pilfering the odd sixpence was child stuff. It was time to step up to richer pastures.  

     I had been fascinated with animals for as long as I could remember, and I just had to see them in the flesh. Glasgow at that time had a small collection of captive animals known as Calder Park Zoo. I was pretty sure that if I kept pestering Dad, he would eventually take me for a visit, but I was not 100% positive. Aside from that, Gilbert Donnelly, who was in my class, was also fascinated with exotic animals. In a way, it was his fault, as it was Gilbert who suggested I go with him to the zoo. There were two reasons I should have nixed his invitation. First, I was forbidden to go without an adult because of the zoo’s location. Although technically within the Glasgow city boundaries, Calder Park Zoo was quite a few miles away, in the city's Northeast section. I lived in Thornliebank, situated in the complete opposite direction.  

The other problem was easily solved, although it was still a problem. I didn’t have the wherewithal to come up with the necessary funds to get to our destination by tramcar, pay the entrance fee, and enjoy some sweeties, which constituted a balanced diet as far as I was concerned. The answer to that dilemma lay inside a particular silver teapot. The next time I found myself alone in the room, I opened the lid and extracted a ten-shilling note. At today’s prices, the money equates to roughly $40. The following morning was Saturday. I met Gilbert, and we both jumped on a tramcar to the city center. After alighting at Glasgow Central Station in Renfield Street, we hopped onto the tram that took us to the zoo. 

We had a wonderful time looking at the animals. I hadn't a care in the world except for a distant concern regarding the stolen money. The high point of the zoo was a cockatiel who answered us. We would ask the bird what it wanted, and it would reply,

 "I wanna potato." This had us bent, double clutching our stomachs with laughter. I don't have any other memories of our time at the zoo, but I will never forget returning home.

    I got off the tram with Gilbert and crossed the street. I proceeded to walk up a little of Crosslees Drive, past the Methodist church, and up the narrow steps that ended at the bottom of Rockmount Avenue. From there, I turned right and climbed the hill to number fifty-two. I opened the front gate, walked down the garden path, and rang the front doorbell. My dad opened the door. I smiled at him, said "hi," then walked past him and turned left into the living room. Dad followed me into the living room. 

"Did you have a nice day?" he asked.

 "Yup!" I replied.

 "And what did you do with the ten shillings?" My body froze on the spot.

 "What ten shillings?" 

"You know what ten shillings."

 "I didn't take any ten shillings." I tried to lie about the theft a couple more times, then something snapped, and I told the truth.  

"I went to the zoo with Gilbert Donnelly." Now my mom joined in. She called me a thief and asked me if I was ashamed of myself.

"Yes," I replied. Most of the rest of the evening and the following day remain a blur in my memory. One thing, however, has stayed with me. Amid my mom and dad berating me, I not only felt terrible, but I also wanted to be punished, almost as though some sort of punishment would lessen my feelings of guilt. So, I yelled at my dad.

"Hit me, go on, hit me." My dad replied,

"Sure, I'll hit you. You don't know what it's like to be hit." 

He then smacked me on my face, hard. I felt the sting, but when I looked up at my dad, I felt a whole lot worse instead of a lessening of guilt. My dad looked down at me. If ever the old saying, 'This will hurt me more than you,' was true, it was now. I could see the hurt in his eyes, and somehow, I knew it was because he hated to hit me. The guilt I was feeling was now even more profound. I wanted so much to tell him how sorry I was, yet the words wouldn't appear. The thing is my emotions were all over the place. If I had been mature enough to recognize the situation, I would have realized that my guilt was so intense because I had let my father down and upset him so terribly. Looking back at it all now, the strange thing is that I had no remorse about the theft itself. I know I would have done the same thing again if I thought I could get away with it.  

I remember my sister’s reactions to it all. My older sister Niki was shocked, not so much about the theft, but about my lying. I know this because I remember her words at my initial denial. She said,

 "How can he lie like that?"

My twin sister Ingrid reacted differently. Over the next few months, whenever we disagreed about something, she would mumble "Thief" because she knew the label would upset me, which it did. Eventually, she just stopped, and the whole incident slowly washed away with time. 

One crucial thing resulted from what I like to think of as my growing pains. After that, I went out of my way to make sure I was honest. Since then, I have never stolen anything. I must admit, though, that I have told the occasional lie.