Pinching

I stole a blue pen from someone's desk this morning. I'm fairly certain you're not supposed to do that if you're a Buddhist. I don't think Pema Chodron would approve. Or not approve. But, it wasn't offered. It was just there. And it wasn't just there, either. It was in a cluster of pens encircled by a rubber band in someone's glass on someone's desk in someone's office.

I wasn't really stealing the first time I helped myself to something. It was only candy from the glass dish at the dressmaker's shop, where I waited impatiently for my mother, who was having a dress altered behind a curtain. The magazines were boring, pictures of dresses. Yuk. Fancy ladies wearing fancy clothes. I had had to fight to get the blue Keds, rather than the red ones, which were for girls. The white Keds were simply impractical for someone about seven years old, who was the only girl invited to the boys' baseball birthday parties, and who preferred going to the hardware store with her father - even if the owner of the store sang "Once in Love with Amy" when she came in - to hanging out in fancy ladies' dress shops with photographs on the walls of glamorous ladies and their glamorous daughters.

I helped myself to a handful of those round hard candies that tasted like lollypops and shoved them in my pocket. I mean, no one said I couldn't.

"What are you eating?" my mother asked me when we were in the car.

"Nothing," I mumbled, packing a cherry flavored candy into my cheek with my tongue.

"You're clearly eating something. Now, what is it?" she persisted.

"Just a candy," I said.

"Where did you get the candy?" my mother continued.

"From the dish in the store."

"Did anyone offer you the candy?"

If I had known the words, this is where I might have said to myself, I know where this is going.

"No, but it was right there in the dish."

"How many did you take?" my mother asked. I noticed that she hadn't started the car.

"Only one," I answered, my sticky hand sliding to my pocket.

"What's that in your pocket?"

"Nothing."

"Let me see," my mother said.

I removed the hand from the pocket which contained four or five hard candies and opened it, palm up.

"Amy, you know that's stealing," my mother said in a voice I didn't particularly like.

"It is? "

"You have to go right back into the store and apologize to Betty for taking something that doesn't belong to you."

If I had known the phrase, this is where I might have said, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

I marched myself back into Betty's store and stammered out some kind of an 'I'm sorry.' I remember that Betty, with her kindly, crinkly eyes looked like Mrs. Tiggywinkle from the Beatrix Potter stories, standing there with her cloud of white hair in her flowered dress and stockings and flat shoes. A tiny round pin cushion was attached to her shoulder. The pins were silver.

I'd like to think that in that instant in that store for fancy ladies with its little glass dish filled with tempting lemon and cherry and lime and grape little round hard candies, a felon was born. But, it's possible the felon was there all along just bursting to break free.

I was good. The trifles came from Woolworth's in the glory days before surveillance cameras: the shiny tubes of cheap lipstick, the sticks of mascara, the pieces of Bazooka Joe's bubble gum. The mini-collectibles were from Steins: tiny lugers, flintlock rifles the length of my finger, enamel Redcoat figures, tin tanks with turrets. The rush was exquisite. The quickening in the belly, the liquid lightning in the veins. The practiced look of disinterest. The grazing fingertips amongst the contents of all those bins. Once, I stole a slingshot.

The feigned deliberation of a shoplifting 10-year-old: no, not that pen or that Venus Coloring set. I came in for, hmm, what was it again?

Hand to chin, head cocked. The seemingly careless circumambulation of aisles. The chosen item secreted in the hand, the hand idly making its way to the pocket. The sneakered feet inching toward the door.

Having observed the browsing habits of my mother, I knew to call a cheery "Thank you!" over my shoulder. The door within reach. My hand grasping the handle, turning it slightly. One blue Ked on the sidewalk. The door clicking shut behind me. Freedom bursting Pop! in my heart like the bubble from a pilfered piece of Bazooka Joe.

Back to the snarfed blue pen (okay, and the white legal pad I "borrowed" to write morning pages.) Of the five basic Buddhist precepts 'not to steal' is #2, right after 'not to kill,' which is #1. On one of her precious teaching tapes, Ani Pema tells a story of arising at an extremely early pre-dawn hour and wending her way through Gampo Abbey to the showers. She disrobes, steps beneath the soothing hot water and then discovers she has forgotten her shampoo. There are cubbies holding other nuns' shampoo. Surely they wouldn't mind if she helped herself to a fractional amount. Her sister nuns with full-hearted generosity would want her to have some. But, Ani Pema is steeped in the pitfalls of mind. She shuts off the water, shrugs on her robe and makes her way back in the cold pre-dawn hours to her quarters to fetch her own shampoo.

It wasn't a mighty leap from a small child's purloined candy to enamel soldiers and a sling shot slipped under a jacket, and later on, to Fair Aisle sweaters, and a few bucks here and there from my mother's wallet. (Well, a lot more than a few bucks from my mother's wallet.) Eventually, though, the thrill of thievery and other adrenalin-charged behaviors no longer served. Even though I like to clench my habitual patterns in a death grip, even though I resist with ferocity, most days I do choose to change. For me, the real freedom lies in gentleness, and - believe it or not - in trying to live a virtuous life. I can smile at my felonious mind and return what doesn't belong to me; I can replace what isn't offered.