Gone Klepto

Supposedly, some people who suffer from Kleptomania don't even relize that they are stealing. I've also read that a lot of what Kleptomaniacs steal are small, inconsequential items. Pens, paper clips....stuff like that. Knowing this prompted me to briefly believe this morning that I may have had a Kleptomaniac episode over the weekend.

Saturday was pretty normal for me. I slept in a little, hit the gym, then headed out to do some grocery shopping at Meijer. I needed some other things too, so I was dragging myself around the store for a little while, making sure I hit every area of the store I might need something from.

Finally I am ready to hit the check out line, and notice there isn't much of a wait at all at the U-Scan machines. In a matter of minutes I'm scanning my stuff, loading it into two bags, and paying for everything. Grab my receipt and toss both bags in the top area of my cart and head out the door. On the way to my car, I do the right thing with my basket and put it into the corral before getting to my car. I lift my two bags out of the top of the basket and head out of there, pleased with how the day has been going.

Fast forward to this morning. 95% of what was in one of my bags ended up in my bathroom for daily use and the other 5% ended up in the closet just outside the bathroom because they were things I'd be using in the near future. Mouthwash, deoderant, toothpaste....this sort of stuff. Anyway, after I am showered up and have eaten breakfast, I get fully dressed and wander into the bathroom to do my hair and brush my teeth before I head out.

Once my hair is done and my mouth sufficiently rinsed with Listerine, I open a new tube of toothpaste and grab my toothbrush. But this is my old toothbrush, not the new toothbrush I picked up on Saturday. Now I don't swap out my toothbrush every 12 days like the ADA likes to tell you to, but I do change them pretty regularly. Once I am done with the old one, I toss it in the trash next to the sink and grab the new one out of the medicine cabinet. Which is exactly what I did this morning....well, except that my routine went out the window as soon as I opened my cabinet.

Strange. I didn't put my new toothbrush in the cabinet yet. OK, it must be in the closet with the extra toothpaste and deoderant I put in there Saturday. Nope. Hmmm, I wonder if I left it in the bag. Negative. No toothbrush in the bag, but the receipt was still there so I glanced at it. Not on the receipt either. WTF?

Then it all comes back to me. As I was picking things off the shelf in Meijer, I put almost everything in the top section of the cart. Even though I needed quite a few things, they were all pretty small and fit right in there. The one exception was the toothbrush. It was too narrow to lay in the top without falling through a crack into the bottom of the basket or onto the floor.

Since I didn't want to risk it dropping onto the floor, I put it in the bottom of the basket right away. And there it stayed throughout my shopping. And my check out. And even after I put the cart back in the corral. Yep, I unknowingly stole a toothbrush from Meijer. Then gave it right back when I put my cart away. I guess I am not a great thief.

I really had mixed feelings about this once I realized what happened. I don't think I've stolen anything from a store since I was about 5 and took too many pieces of Bazooka bubble gum for the amount of money I gave the clerk. A handful of nickels and dimes, a handful of gum, a clerk who definitely wasn't smarter than a 5 year-old me....it was the perfect crime. Until my mom found out.

You would have thought I stole the Hope Diamond with her reaction. Thankfully she stopped short of making me go back in there and confess to the clerk at the store, but that talk has stuck with me since. This is just another example of how lucky I was to get the parents I did. Sooner or later, no matter how they are brought up in the first place, most kids (especially boys) try stealing something. It can be a 5 cent piece of gum or something of much greater value. The principle is the same. Having a good parent handle the situation, though, makes all the difference in the world.

With my mother handling it the way she did, I never felt right even thinking about stealing anything after that....and that's the first thing that popped into my head when I realized what had happened. Not only had I stole something, but I stole something from my mother's employer. Nevermind that I didn't do it on purpose, or that I didn't even pack it into my things as I left the parking lot. Just the fact that I was careless enough to do that without even thinking bothered me enough.

Well, that and looking at my only toothbrush sitting in the trash without a replacement in the house.