I Was a Teenage Kleptomaniac

I once heard that when shoplifting minors get caught and prosecuted, part of their punishment includes putting them in a room full of other shoplifters and showing them a film on all the latest anti-shoplifting devices and strategies stores have at their disposal. The idea is to fill the young pilferers with a sense of hopelessness at the forces arrayed against them, to get them "scared straight", but since it shows how people go about defeating these forces, it's really more of a training film than a warning against juvenile filching.

Now while I was caught several times during my heady kleptomania period, I was never prosecuted and so never got the benefit of seeing this alleged how-to video. Nor did I know anyone else at the time who shared my illicit hobby, so whatever sticky-fingered wisdom I've gleaned from my teenage adventures in crime I gleaned in complete ignorance of what other, perhaps better shoplifters were doing. In any case, here are the highlights:

Birth of a Klepto

An anti-shoplifting manufacturer called Merchant Service Systems, Inc. recognizes three different sorts of shoplifter:

Professional: The professional shoplifter steals for a living. He is potentially the most dangerous since he steals for the money. The money may support a drug habit or other illegal needs. Professionals usually target retailers without anti-shoplifting systems.

Determined Amateur: This amatuer steals specific items. These items are of value to the person stealing the goods for their own use. The determined amateur is usually a non-violent individual but accounts for the largest number of attempts.

Impulse Thief: This individual steals because of the opportunity that is provided by the store. They probably did not come to the store to steal but will when given the opportunity.

I myself fell into the "Determined Amateur" variety.

My whole motivation for shoplifting can ultimately be traced back to my experience with, of all things, Dungeons & Dragons. It was unlike any game I had ever heard of, a kind of free-form play where there was no winning or losing and could potentially go on forever, and I was immediately hooked. Unfortunately, the sorts of people the game seems to attract are very often either extreme bores or young psychopaths in the bud, so I found myself getting less and less involved with the game itself and more into its peripheral aspects: character portraits, medieval and ancient history, languages, mythology, and so on. But these were high-maintenance hobbies, since I needed a constant flow of drawing supplies, magazines (most of my drawings then used magazine pictures as models), books, and general D&D crap. Some of these things I could get from the library, but between school and my parents (who outlawed anything smacking of D&D from the house after they saw the anti-D&D TV movie Monsters & Mazes), I could only use them a wee bit at a time and so needed to keep them a lot longer than I could check them out for at the library. And continuously re-checking them out didn't hold much appeal, since I had no car at the time and trips to the library were thus a pain in the ass. Something had to give.

The Secret of the Metal Strips

For a while now a lot of libraries were putting something in the books that would trigger the alarm if not properly checked out at the front desk. I had no idea how this worked, and for a long time fear and ignorance reduced me to poaching from the school library, where the pickins were pretty slim and hardly worth the effort. Finally I learned that the thing that set off the alarm at the bigger libraries was simply a thin metal strip glued to the inside spine of hard backs, or between the pages of some paper backs. No strip, no alarm. So I made it my habit to always carry an x-acto knife to the library, where, if the need arose, I could surgically remove the strips, load the books into my backpack, and walk out with little fear. I was never sure if magazines had strips in them or not, though, so I usually just cut out the pictures I needed and tucked them into a folder stuffed with homework. All this worked beautifully; the only problem I ever had was that sometimes some other klepto would beat me to the punch, so that after a long search I'd find that the book had already been stolen or the magazine already gutted. But as profitable as all this was, a lot of things I wanted simply weren't available in libraries. I would have to buy them at a store.

The Stuff and Dash Period

Looking back, I often have to remind myself that I stole from libraries at all, since at the time I didn't consider what I did to be a real crime. True stealing, in my mind, would be stealing from a store, something I had never considered. So when it happened, it was done on pure impulse, and I did it in the simplest, dumbest way possible: after agonizing for what could have been hours over the possibility of getting caught, I stuffed a Teach Yourself Finnish book down my shorts and stiffly walked out of the bookstore. (The Finnish word for stupid, by the way, is tyhmä).

Now at the time, ramming a book down my pants didn't seem like such a bad idea, since I was pretty thin and the region between my crotch and ribs was fairly flat (if not concave); I could therefore stuff several books or magazines there without it looking obvious. Later on I got more resourceful, and at my peak would walk back to my (parents') car after hitting several stores almost completely encased in a glossy armor of new and used magazines: I had them stacked and tiled from my crotch up to my neck, the seat of my pants to the small of my back, and even my socks were transformed into periodical grieves. Sometimes I'd also take a school folder along to carry stray magazine cut-outs or amputated video box covers. It became a kind of art, carrying out a small library without appearing to be carrying anything at all.

Of course, right from the beginning this stuff-and-dash method presented all sorts of problems:

  • Reduced mobility. Having a book shoved down your pants is fine as long as you only plan to take small steps. The moment you try to take longer strides, the corners of the book start digging into your thighs and even can even prevent you from taking longer strides at all. And God help you if you need to run...

  • Reduced flexibility. It's very difficult to bend when you're covered in your own loot. On one occasion when I was trying to escape from someone who was wise to me, I found that I almost couldn't get into my car, or sit normally once I finally did. And then there's the paper cuts...

  • Nervous sweat. Some people shoplift for the fun of it; I did it because I wanted things but never had any money to get them. I was always paranoid of getting caught, and even after I left the immediate scene of the crime would make long zig-zag patterns back to my car. And since I was frequently a nervous wreck while out on safari, when I finally got home I'd find that some of the loot would be drenched in sweat and even smudged. Not a good thing if you're stealing pictures.

  • Difficult to explain away. Let's face it: if you get caught with a bunch of merchandise stuffed down your pants, it's pretty hard to play dumb and talk yourself out of it.

The Virtues of Innocence

I should probably take a moment here to discuss one or two common sense rules.

  • Avoid shoplifting in a store crowded with people. Holidays are especially terrible for this sort of thing. It's hard to work without being spotted by someone, and worse, it's harder to escape. This seems really obvious, but sometimes your greed gets the better of you and you go ahead with things anyway. (The one time I got busted -- although thankfully not prosecuted, was at a crowded book store: my only hope of escape was a nearby escalator, but as I headed toward it I realized that it was jammed with people from top to bottom. As I stood there with my loot I could hear the clerk running up from behind me: "Sir! Sir! Did you buy that magazine?")

  • Always play the idiot. It sounds lame, but I've been caught more than once and every time I acted completely dazed, confused, and innocent of all wrongdoing. Most often I get let off right away. More suspicious types question me a little longer before throwing up their hands and letting me off with a warning. Remember: stupidity is your friend.

  • Clean yourself up before going on safari. The guy who busted me was on to me almost as soon as I walked in the store. Why? Because I came in looking like a strung-out gangster. Every time I went out looking like that (which was how I normally looked then), everyone -- store clerks, cops, old women -- everyone kept a wary eye on me. It was only when I shaved and otherwise looked as wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting that I was completely invisible -- and credible when I feigned innocence in the face of accusations.

  • Seinfeld's George Costanza once advised Jerry: "It's not a lie if you believe it." This can't be over-emphasized. It's not enough to simply say you're innocent. You have to be innocent. You have to believe, or at least be able to rationalize at a moment's notice, that what you're doing is not a crime, that you didn't do anything wrong, that you have no idea what's going on. Your face needs to say this before your mouth does. When a store manager or security guard is trying to decide whether or not to go through the paperwork of prosecuting you, your sincerity is one less reason for them to bother.

  • You can never be too vague. If they ask you to clarify something, do it with more vagueness. You don't know anything specific. (Remember that you're nervous and not thinking everything through right now, so any detail you give them, even seemingly irrelevant ones, could be damning later on in the questioning.) This is especially true if you're working together with someone else and you're being questioned separately. If your stories don't match, you're screwed. If they're like horoscopes and match anything, you have some credibility.

It's in the Bag

Part of the problem of convincing a store manager or whoever of your innocence is that (1) you have no receipt and (2) you have no bag. When I hit upon this realization, I started saving the bags and receipts my mom would bring home whenever she went to a store I would frequent. The plan was simple: I would carry variously sized bags for various stores with me when I went to make my rounds and then simply slip whatever I wanted into the appropriate bag -- receipt already stapled on. This allowed me to steal bigger and bigger things, and as long as no one thoroughly read the receipt it all looked perfectly legitimate. To be on the safe side, though, I would sometimes wait till the current cashier's shift ended, so if questioned by anyone I could confidently claim that I bought it from the last cashier and even give a description of what he or she looked like. If I had to run, I no longer had to worry about castrating myself doing it, and if I was actually caught -- since I did after all have a bag and receipt (bogus though it was) -- it was easier to simply do like OJ and deny, deny, deny. ("Look, maybe she gave me the wrong receipt. How should I know? I was just buying a book. I didn't think to even look at the receipt. Maybe I was stupid for not looking, but I figured if a cashier makes a mistake that's their mistake; I didn't realize I'd get hassled over it...")

It's in the Box

By now my initial inspiration for petty theft -- my fascination with Dungeons & Dragons -- was far behind me. To be sure, I was still very much interested in language, history, and so on, and shoplifted accordingly, but it was no longer for the sake of the game, which, quite frankly, I rarely played. Now my kleptomania was simply a way of life, and I no longer required the excuse of the game to go on pilfering runs. Now I stole everything I felt I could get away with, no matter how mundane the item, simply because it was cheaper that way.

Now so far everything I had stolen had to be able to fit in a shopping bag. This changed, however, when I took a crappy $4.50/hour job at a warehouse. Here I worked as a "picker" -- that is, a person who goes up and down the aisles fetching the merchandise someone ordered -- and I quickly learned that pickers were regularly suspected of theft (although not as much as "receivers", the guys who unload the trucks) and were thus constantly watched. And I mean really watched. For several days the boss followed me around the aisles no more than 10 feet away from me, hands on hips, glaring at me the whole time and waiting to catch me in the act. Except that there was nothing to catch since, although I was stealing everything under the sun elsewhere, I had no thought of stealing from my job. But after a month or so of working there and learning to hate it more and more, I finally decided to hop on the alleged bandwagon and start taking some perks.

And how did I do this? The same way I did it everywhere else -- the reverse Trojan Horse strategy. So I asked the boss if I could take home some of the huge boxes that were piling up, since my roommate was planning to move out and could certainly use them. He agreed, and after that it was just like in the book stores, except that now I was carrying out boxes so full of books, video tapes, and computer software that I could barely lift them.

Fortunately, a friendly "checker" got wise to what I was up to and would warn me when the bosses suspected something was up. But more importantly, he talked me out of a lot of stupid things, for by now I was convinced I was invincible and was even contemplating stealing a Mac II right out of the boss's office.

The Girlfriend

I suppose I'd be somebody's penile pincushion in prison now if it hadn't been for my girlfriend at the time. So far, of course, I had paid scant attention to my friends' pleas for me to stop my evil ways, especially when they'd typically finish with lines like "And what's really bad is that you didn't think that maybe I would've wanted a Webster's Third New International Dictionary...!" For a while my girlfriend gave up trying to reason with me and just put up with it, but when it got to the point that every time a cop car drove by we'd dive for cover, when my girlfriend had to memorize code phrases in Esperanto (like Kaŝu la bendojn ĉe la Megero! "Hide the tapes at Zoë's!") in case I got caught at work and suspected a raid was imminent, when my friends had to be drilled on various contingency plans to move all the loot from my apartment at a moment's notice, when every day at work seemed likely to be my last, then even I could see the wisdom of calling the quits. And I did, little by little -- first at work, where the situation was more perilous, then elsewhere, until finally I was just paying for everything like everyone else. I felt like Henry Hill at the end of Goodfellas.

Epilogue

It took a lot of pleading, arguing, close calls, and gnawing paranoia before I finally settled down and hung up my klepto jeans (as I called my baggy pants with big pockets), and when I did, I did it for good. My girlfriend had won at long last, and no longer had to worry every time I was late that it was because I was in the slammer. For the first time since we'd been together, we could breathe easy.

So what happened just a week or two before our graduation from college? My girlfriend out of nowhere decides she's going to shoplift a hat. A hat! She'd never stolen anything in her life, had broken me out of the habit, and was now going to risk her degree and everything else over a fucking hat! And now it was I who tried to talk sense into her. But of course she wouldn't listen, and not more than a minute passed before the campus security people nailed her. And that was that. If ever there was a possibility that my former life of paying less than full price would someday rise from the grave, my girlfriend's debacle provided the proverbial final nail in the coffin that would keep it shut forever.