Juvenile Crime by Ricky

The very first criminal act I can remember doing was when I was only 10; in the 5th grade and on my way home from school. I have a powerful attraction to ice cream. So strong it is that back then, you might have even seen me transform into an “ice cream-zombie”. For that matter, I still do occasionally.

So, one particular week previous to my act of criminality, I had been stopping by the local grocery store where my parents shopped. I had left over lunch money and my purpose for stopping there was to buy an ice cream sandwich at a cost of 10-cents; eating it on my way home.

The week following I had no left over lunch money but the attraction to ice cream was still as powerful as ever and I stopped by the store. I searched everywhere in my pockets and book binder while walking up and down the aisles but try as I might, I just could not find the money that was not there. So I turned into a criminal. Carefully scanning for potential witnesses and hoping no one could hear my pounding heart, I quickly opened the ice cream cooler, removed one ice cream sandwich, placed it into my book binder and left the store.

I waited until I crossed the highway before I removed the thing, unwrapped, and ate it. On the bright side, I did throw the wrapper into a trash bin I was walking by; after all I wasn't a despicable litter-bug. The next four days found me doing the same thing before guilt overcame attraction. I learned from these experiences that males (especially boys) can hear the “siren call” of inanimate objects quite clearly, objects such as ice cream sandwiches, or firearms, or fast cars, or any baseball/football games in their vicinity or on a TV, or the call of a video game console.

Once back from my grandparent's farm and again living with my mother, I went by myself trick or treating until my little brother and sister were old enough to go, and then I took them. The last year I ever went, my friend and I did pull a couple of “tricks” on two homes we got candy from (interpret that as vandalism). Both people we met at the door said that we were too old to be “trick-or-treating”; I was 15 and my friend was 13. I replied that no one is too old to want free candy. Since they had challenged our “right” to beg for candy, we used ski wax to write four letter words on their car windows. Ski wax doesn't come off by washing; it must be scrapped off.

Like Peter Pan, I also had a dark side. I wasn’t always a nice kid.

Pan's Dark Side

© 2 February 2013

About the Author

  

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com