Penny Pincher

I’m a coin collector. Not in the sense that I have all of the state quarters neatly placed and cataloged in a protective case, but in the sense that a penny found on the sidewalk will put a smile on my face and a quarter will send me into paroxysms of glee.

I periodically fill up a Soy Vay jar and cash in its contents when I can’t cram in another dime, even with vigorous shaking to make the coins settle. The first time I took my jar to a coin counter I had raided most of the quarters for the soda machine but it still came out to $40 that I had previously considered gone but not forgotten.

Craig contributes to my Soy Vay jar under the condition that he and I share whatever we buy with our free money. A night of sushi and wine, a cool gadget, a paperback series… whatever strikes our fancy because this is play money! Once in a while I’ll donate the jar to Craig if he’s buying something big but necessary, like a new computer after I bounced his old one off the bed. We help each other out.

When I was little I would sneak around the house, scavenging all the loose change. A nickel here, a few pennies there… just enough that my parents wouldn’t notice. Every once in a while, when I was feeling bold, I would skim a few quarters off the top of a 5 gallon jug of change my dad kept in the corner of his office. I had to work up my courage between raids because I was sure that he counted it, sifting the coins through his fingers like a dragon gloating over his hoard. I was a very sporadic thief.

Kayla, on the other hand, was a kleptomaniac. I condemned her for it, especially when I was with her at the time. I didn’t want to be labeled as her accomplice but time and again she conned me into standing in front of a camera while she unwrapped her prize and I scolded her in a whisper.

When we were sixteen I drove us to the nearby (which, since we lived in the boonies, was actually 20 minutes away) pharmacy for a cosmetics run. Neither of us had a job but I was good at saving and could afford to pamper my insecurities. Kayla spent all of her extra cash on pot and Adderall. She didn’t care much about her looks anyway, but eyeliner was a special vice.

“Stand in front of me while I open this,” she said in a low voice. “Act like we’re talking about something.”

“About what, the merits of one type of eyeliner over another? Jesus, Kayla, why do you have to steal everything?” I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to fidget.

She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Because I’m poor, that’s why.”

“You wouldn’t be if you didn’t smoke pot all the –”

“I’m done.” She cut me off as she stowed the denuded eyeliner pencil in her purse.

I shook my head. She had been so clumsy, so obvious, I couldn’t believe she was getting away with it. The jerky hand movements, the shifty eyes, the sudden pause on one, seemingly innocuous spot… I expected a cashier to run after us or an alarm to sound as we moved toward the door, too quickly to be casual.

Once we were safely on the road, Kayla laughed at my nervousness. “See?” she said. “Totally easy. Nobody pays attention to anything.”

I pursed my lips, eyes fixed ahead. “I still wish you wouldn’t steal while I’m stuck as your getaway driver.”

She made a noise of disgust. “It was overpriced anyway.”

Later that year I was on a shopping trip with my mother looking for school clothes. She had wandered off, trusting that I could navigate the junior’s section without getting lost. After meandering aimlessly for a few minutes I spotted a fake pearl and silvery alloy necklace that looked pretty but was worth about twenty cents. I glanced at the price tag and my eyes widened like a cartoon character’s.

Twelve dollars. I was shocked by capitalism’s lack of class. I toyed with it for a few minutes knowing I couldn’t possibly justify paying twelves dollars for a string of plastic and tin.

The idea of stealing it whispered like an echo in the back of my head. I was appalled at myself at first, but the longer I looked at that price tag the more viable of an option it became. An owner-less quote flitted through my stream of consciousness: “Everything tastes sweeter when it’s free.”

I plucked the necklace from its stand, gathered a handful of jeans, and headed to the fitting room. Once I was safely behind a door I fidgeted with the tag, rustling to hide the tell-tale snap of plastic. Once I slipped the tag into an abandoned pair of pants, I silently lowered the necklace to the bottom of my purse.

None of the jeans fit, of course, but I was forced to wait in line while my mom bought me a couple shirts. The cashier smiled at me and my heart beat wildly. She knows!

She checked us out without interfering but I figured she had pressed the button under the counter that would call a burly security guard who would tackle me as soon as look at me. Or she knew that the alarm would catch me, bringing the same guard. As my mom and I reached the doors my anxiety climbed until we stepped over the threshold and absolutely nothing happened.

I was amazed. Stealing was easy! I regarded my necklace as a prize I had won rather than a piece of merchandise mass produced by Chinese babies. But then my mind ran away on one of its tangents and I started thinking about what my mom would think of me had I been caught. By the time we pulled into the driveway the euphoria had dissipated and I was left feeling ashamed and guilty. I wore the necklace twice before it earned a permanent spot in the back of a drawer.

By the time I turned eighteen the guilt had worn off, replaced by a deep disdain for capitalism, and I was ready to try my hand at stealing again. My first foray had left me with a valuable lesson: fitting rooms are a thief’s best friend.

Security tags had come out in full force. So when I stumbled across a shirt that should have had one but didn’t, I thanked the Forgetfulness God who had struck the employee in charge of tagging. I picked a few more shirts and retreated to the fitting rooms.

I was surprised by my lack of nerves. It was like I was an old hand at this sort of thing instead of an awkward teen brought up under a strict moral code. I simply shoved the shirt in my bag and continued shopping.

Shoplifting was a once-in-a-blue-moon activity before I got a job. Once I became an jewelry cashier at a retail chain and inherited their dress code, I turned to my old friend Sticky Fingers to furnish me with my work clothes. I bought most of them legitimately but anything without a security code went into the bag. The same pattern emerged when I started working at a jeweler. Gotta look nice? Have we got the low, low price.

I considered people who stole out in the open to be stupid. I took the safe route; no cameras, no salespeople, no suspicious shoppers. But then a thought wormed its way into my head, silly little thing, until I couldn’t get it out. I wanted to try real shoplifting, just once. I’m a writer, I told myself. I need all the experiences I can get.

I pulled up to the pharmacy, my pulse beating in my wrist. I could see the thin blue vein pumping. I told myself that I didn’t have to do it, but I knew that if I chickened out I would never respect myself. Obviously, I have strange standards.

I figured that the beast way to allay suspicion was to attract attention. I knew that if I tried to act invisible, stealth being something that I am inherently bad at, I would get caught. So I dolled myself up, threw on a pretty, innocence-invoking dress, and waltzed in with a smile on my face.

As I compared the price of eyeliner pencils, my intended steal, I thought of how obvious Kayla had been doing exactly this and I vowed to be better. Old me would be disappointed, I thought with a smile.

I meandered over to the razors and fiddled with the mechanics of the plastic case. I use men’s razors since they’re the only ones that don’t leave my legs resembling a butcher’s rejects; apparently, they’re often stolen because this case was ridiculous. The instructions on the side said to push the red button and wait for the merchandise to fall into the slot. When I poked hesitantly at the button, the case made a horrible mechanical grinding noise meant to alert the cashiers that someone was going for a razor, but nothing dropped into the slot. I pushed the button two or three times before an employee, no doubt tired of hearing that awful noise, rescued me and pushed the button in herself. And of course, the razor popped right out.

As I thanked her and turned to walk away, she complimented me on my dress. I thrilled inwardly at the imminent success of my operation; I had made such a fool of myself that the employees would think me incapable of stealing anything and I had spoken directly to a cashier, giving them a bead on my face.

So it didn’t matter, then, when I rounded the corner and clumsily placed the eyeliner in my purse. Just as awkwardly as Kayla had. It seems that it is impossible to steal casually.

I bought my razors and birth control, utilizing the philosophy that buying something averts suspicion. I mean, what thief in his right mind would dally in a store he had just robbed?

Once I was back in my car I congratulated myself on completing my first drug store heist. I was glad that I had gone through with it, considering it a rite of passage of sorts, but Kayla kept nagging in the back of my brain. Banishing her to less accusatory parts of my body, I drew out the eyeliner and glanced at the nine dollar price tag, thinking that I could afford to buy it had I truly needed it. Then I thought of that old opportunist, Capitalism, and I knew that I couldn’t afford the stupidity of paying nine dollars for a chunk of crayon. After all, it was over-priced.