Past: The Gum Thieves

Kids are conceited little wretches. Even before they gain rational thought, they try pulling stuff on their parents. A kid never suspects that his or her parents were once kids themselves and that they already know all the tricks.




As soon as my newborn son, Oscar, learns some basic English, I will explain to him that his plans won't work. I'm watching that little traitor. Always watching. Always.

     Anyway, this particular memory happened around when I was six or seven. It was a nice summer day; it was not too hot. Just the perfect day--FOR STEALING!


    My older brother, who is always full of mischief, reported that there was some bounty to be had in the kitchen. In the drawer full of everything (you know what I am talking about, everyone has one), behind all the twist ties and random junk, there was a giant pack of Wrigley's Double Mint Gum. I think it was a pack of like ten or twenty packs, but whatever the amount, it was a prize to be had.

Of course we were off limits to bad foods like candy and gum, but it was just too tempting. Forbidden fruit is the tastiest. In this instance, it's forbidden gum, but whatever, it's still off limits.

  What was our plan? Short version: flawlessness! Long version: We were going to take the spoils out of the package and sneak it outside where we would not be under the watchful eyes of our parents. In our little, but obviously ingenious, little minds, one of the biggest hurdles would be our minty breath. Surely the parents would guess that we took gum if our breath was minty. Solution? We were going to drink orange juice after we got done chewing our gum so that our minty breath would be concealed. As I said before, the plan was flawless.

 Everything went according to plan. We stole, we hid, we disposed of evidence, we drank the juice.

    THEY FOUND OUT ANYWAY.

    I was seriously perplexed as a kid as to how my parents were constantly on to me. I couldn't pull a thing off. This plan was no exception. Somehow my dad figured out that we got into the gum, and both I and my brother were punished accordingly.

    I thought about this incident throughout the years (you will find a long running theme in my blog that I don't easily forget stuff) and some time later I figured it out. The flaw in our seemingly flawless plan was we opened a pack of unopened gum. Wow. We were dumb.

     While I know that the end result of our caper could have been successful, I'm kind of nostalgic of the fact that it didn't. Going way back to what I said at the beginning of the post, now I am the parent. I might be flattering myself here, but now I know all the tricks! HA!