The last time I wrote one of these, my mom kind of freaked out because she didn’t know about it. So I questioned whether I would continue in this line of blogging, but then I thought, maybe I’ll just use something she does know about, so here goes.
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I still remember my first roll of mints, or at least the first roll I can remember being specifically mine. There were three mints in it.
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I remember being a very young boy, so young I was still wearing those old shorts that had the elastic waist with the solid color bordering the entire seam of the shorts. You know, the ones basketball players wore in the 1960’s and you still see an occasional jogger wearing proudly.
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Anyway, I remember standing in the parking lot across from the seven-eleven next to one of the neighborhood kids that was a year or two older than me just staring at the gas station. I’m not even sure I was allowed to be that far from home at this age because I couldn’t have been more than 5, but there I was. This kid, we’ll call him Jimmy, because that was his name, asked me, “So what are you gonna steal?” I said, “Nothing!” of course. What other response could have come from my angel lips? But he retorted, “I’m taking something, you should too.”
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The next thing I remember is being in the seven-eleven wondering what in the world I could take. I don’t remember how I got in the store, or how I decided I would in fact begin my career as a shoplifter, but I was there and I was trying to figure out what would be my first “lift”.
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I landed on a 15 cent pack of mints. There were three mints in it, so if you do that math, that was a nickel a piece.
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I however had failed to notice I didn’t have any pockets in my incredibly timely shorts, so my newly criminalized mind began working on solution. “Okay, okay, now I got it. I’ll put them between my skin and the elastic band of my underwear.” Great plan right? It is a very safe place to put things if I may say so. So I tucked them in and found my way somehow back to the parking lot across the street, once again standing next to the boy we’re calling Jimmy, once again, because that was his name.
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The first time we stood there, he asked me what I would steal, this time I stood and asked him what he had stolen. My nerves were barely calming when Jimmy said, “Nothing, why would I steal something?” Beats me why he would steal something? Shortly thereafter I found myself standing next to Jimmy on my front porch as he told my mother what I had done. My mom made me go back to the store, pay for the mints and apologize to the woman working behind the counter I couldn’t even seem to see over.
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There were three mints in the roll, so if you do the math, that’s about one mint to every two swats of the paddle on my bare skinned butt.
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So who is responsible?
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I spent quite a bit of my life blaming my problems and faults on others. In most situations that didn’t turn out well like this one I saw myself as a victim. But if you review the story, you will see that I took the mints. Seven-eleven was the victim. I was the culprit. I am responsible, not Jimmy.
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If you know what I mean, you gotta let Jimmy go, you have to forgive him and yourself. In the Bible, in a book called 1 Corinthians it says, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me (13:11).” So put it down. Leave it behind.
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I still feel myself feeling very childish sometimes and wanting to claim the position of victim, but there were three mints in that roll, and I ate every one of them.
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