KEY POINTS:
When I was 6 or 7, I stole a rubber from the local dairy in Tokoroa. It was a really awesome rubber - big and grey and grainy and it was one of the newfangled ones that was supposed to be able to rub out ballpoint pen.
I
REALLY wanted one - a couple of the cool girls at school had them - but I also REALLY wanted an aniseed wheel and a packet of lolly cigarettes, and I stood at the counter for HOURS trying to make up my mind.
And then in one heart-stopping moment I realised I could have both. Tired of waiting for me to reach a decision, the lovely man who owned the dairy turned to do something else and, quick as a criminal, I snatched the rubber and shoved it into the pocket of my shorts. Heart pounding, cheeks flushed and dry mouthed, I pointed out the lollies I wanted, handed over my 10 cents, and scarpered.
All the way home I expected to hear someone call out "stop thief" and as soon as I got home, I went straight to my room. When mum came to get me for dinner, I told her I wasn't feeling well. And I wasn't. The rubber felt like a lead weight in my pocket and there was a dead weight in my stomach too.
By my actions, I had become a different person - I was now a thief. Just as later in my life, I would have the same sense of something portentous and irreversible having occurred.
Like the first time I said the F word. Then the morning after I'd gone all the way and the moment I found out I was pregnant, and so I realised that this rubber would change me for ever.
As the time came nearer for my bath, I started to panic. I would have to get unchanged, my clothes would go to the laundry - what the hell was I going to do with the rubber? I didn't have any hiding places - I'd never needed any - and what would mum say when she saw it? That may have been my guilty conscience projecting.
I know back in the 70s there wasn't a glut of stuff and anything new had relevance but it's likely, with the benefit of hindsight, my busy working mother wouldn't have noticed a rubber. Even a really cool ballpoint pen rubber.
But in my criminal underworld, there was no rationalising. I decided I had to dispose of the rubber and there was only one way to dispose of it completely - I ate it. It tasted awful, but I ate it all up and then burst into tears. Mum came to me immediately and the full story came out.
The relief to no longer have to carry my awful secret alone! Even though I was as sick as a dog because of the ingestion of the rubber, I felt so much better knowing that I wasn't living a lie.
Mum gave me a fearful telling off, and we decided that in the morning I would go back to the nice man at the dairy, confess my sin, pay for the rubber and offer some sort of penance. I slept like a baby, apart from the uneasy churning in my belly.
The next day, Mum and I visited the man at the dairy and I was able to make it up to him. I can't remember what my actual penance was but it can't have been particularly onerous. And I have never, ever stolen anything again. I'm just not cut out for it.
I don't graze at supermarkets - plucking grapes here, shoving handfuls of nuts in my mouth there - I correct people if they give me the wrong change, I pay people more if I think they're undercharging.
Not because I think I'm a good person, but because I can't cope with ripping off people. Maybe it's being raised a Catholic, maybe it's just the way my moral compass is set - and ours are all set differently. I just don't know.
All I know is that I'm glad my childhood indiscretion didn't end up as front-page news - unlike the wee 5-year-old in Timaru.
Yes, it was wrong. Yes, her mother should have been more publicly sympathetic to the supermarket and less concerned about the infringement of her child's rights.
But the child knows what she did was wrong.
A jolly good talking to, and stacking the shelves for an hour, would have been a far better punishment than banning her from the premises for two years. The ban has since been rescinded and Woolworths has said it'll apologise to the family, so the whole furore has been a bit pointless.
A 5-year-old shouldn't have been made to sign a trespass order and Woolworths shouldn't have to apologise to thieves. I have no sympathy for shoplifters - people who steal as a way of life.
But sometimes you need to stuff up to understand the consequences of doing wrong - and if that 5-year-old is anything like me, the horror of what she has done will ensure she never does it again.
