26. The day I got caught stealing 😬

I don't think I ever fully recovered from the shame 🙈

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

When I was seven, I can vividly remember being shipped off to a daycare group where it was all employees from Penguin Books because my mum used to work in Penguin Books and as one of the perks of being an employee at Penguin Books, you could get free childcare for a week during end of term, you know, half-term when we were off school. So I remember it being half-term and being really excited because it meant that I had a whole week off school. And then my mum came home one day and said, You're gonna be going to this group for this week, right? And I said, What is this group? And I forget what the name of it was now, but it had a really weird name. It was like it wasn't the happy bus, but it was something along those lines. It was like the happy squad or something, or the fun squad, or something like that. And I remember being absolutely gutted because this meant that I wouldn't get to spend my time over the park with my friends at home. I didn't really know what it meant, what I would be doing there, but I knew that it wasn't good. And I was literally dreading this day where I would get taken into this group. I didn't know anyone there, it was just a complete bunch of strangers, and the environment seemed a bit scary, you know, the fun posse or whatever it was called sounded a bit daunting. And then one day on this Monday, I got woken up early by my mum, bundled into the car with a you know, sensible set of clothes and a packed lunch in this drawstring bag that's important later on to remember. I had a drawstring bag that had my packed lunch in it, and a jumper and some other bits. So off we went in the car, and we drove it was a good I don't know, 40 minutes 45 minutes and maybe an hour that we drove to go to this place, and we pulled up outside in this car park outside of school, and I could see all of these other kids being dropped off by their parents, all looking a bit awkward, and it was all a bit scary and a bit unusual. And there were uh two women standing by the entrance to this building who looked one of them was like really do you do you know like when you yeah, back in like the late 80s, early 90s, teachers used to have a different vibe about them. They weren't friendly looking and sort of wearing gym gear like they are nowadays. These were teachers that were kind of full Staffian figures, they were dressed in old-fashioned clothes and they looked they looked intimidating, they looked like they just were ready to shout at you at any point. So they were kind of welcoming people, these kids, into this building. I remember saying to my mum, I really don't want to go in there, please can we just go home? And she was like, No, no, no, it's gonna be fine, you're gonna have a great time. This time tomorrow you'll be begging to come back. And she sort of dumped me through these doors, jumped in a car and drove off. And you know, when you're a kid, you know that there's absolutely no way you're gonna get out of that place until your parents come and pick you up afterwards, and you have this sinking feeling of oh, this place doesn't feel right. Do you know what I mean? Where you have you just feel like you're not in control because you're not at that age, you're just you know, there's an adult that's in charge, they're the ones in control, you're just there at their whim, really. And I remember we came into this room, and it was basically it was a it was a school that had been closed down because obviously it was half-term or whatever it was, and there were no kids there, so and no teachers or anyone, so it was an empty school that we were allowed to use for this thing. And we walked into this classroom where on the walls there were pictures that the kids that went to that school had done, and there were art projects around the sides, and some of the kids had left lunch boxes on the tables, and it was just it was definitely like left in a hurry at the end of term. So we kind of walked into this place. There must have been, as I remember, there must there was probably like 15 or 20 of us in there, and we all kind of sat down awkwardly around the room, sort of staring at each other, no one really talking. And these two old-fashioned teachers came in and asked each of us to go around and stand up and introduce ourselves. When you're seven, that's not an easy thing to do, is it? To stand up and introduce yourself to a room full of people you don't know. And it was, you know, when people sway when they talk, they sort of bob and move side to side because they're nervous. Everyone was doing that, I think I did as well. So we're all going round, and I was like, Oh, hello, yeah, my name's Daniel, and um, yeah, I I like to I think I said I like to ride BMX. That was the way I introduced myself. My name's Daniel, and I like to um ride BMX. Uh I think because I I was watching I'd seen the the movie BMX Bandits and I thought that was awesome, so I wanted to come across as cool. So I said that I liked I was Daniel and I like to ride BMX, and after a while the teacher was like, right, you know when they do that fake, over-the-top happy voice that some grown-ups do around kids, where they were like, right now we're gonna do some we're gonna draw some pictures, and everyone was sort of looking around thinking we're a bit too old to be spoken to like that. It was it was horrible. No, no one wanted to be there. Some of a couple of the kids as I remember were crying, they wanted to go home, and the the teachers weren't doing a very good job of consoling them. It was all a bit awkward and a bit stinted. So the week went on anyway, and we did we had we did things like I remember there was a judo class where we all got taken into the school hall and they put down some crash pads and some mats, and the teachers there obviously didn't have a clue about judo, so they they kind of gave us these um they were like it was like string, like coloured string, and we're told to wrap them around our waist as if they were judo belts, and they were trying to show us how to throw people on the floor, but they didn't know what they were doing, so it was kind of all a bit messy, and I think a couple of kids got hurt. One girl, I remember she hurt her finger, another boy, I think, did something with his neck, if I remember rightly, and it was yeah, there was there was injuries. I don't know what their insurance policy was like, whether they were actually allowed to teach us judo or not, but there was that, and um we also did we did this thing where we had to have a race wearing these they were like plastic cups with if you turn a plastic cup upside down on the floor and then kind of crudely drilled a hole in each side and put a string in it and then made a loop, so they were kind of like stilts. So the idea was you hold this the string up in the air and you stand on top of these cups and you can run around on them like stilts, but they were like homemade ones, they weren't proper stilts, so we had to do a race with those. I remember we were skidding around on this slippery school gym hall, and people again people were getting hurt. It was just like it was chaos, really. Um, we had to do a dance routine as well at one point, and I remember all the boys we had zero interest in doing a dance routine, it was all a bit weird. I think it might have been backstreet boys we had to do a dance routine to, and then they said, Oh, what we're gonna do is at the end of the week we're gonna show the parents this dance routine, and I can remember thinking I cannot think of anything worse than dancing to Backstreet Boys in a routine with all these kids in front of my parents. That sounds like hell. I remember thinking that really vividly. Uh, we did art as well, we did some, as I remember, we did some we had like dried pasta and buttons and stuff that we were sticking to paper. And it was all a bit shit, if I'm honest. It's like it was none of it was good. The music section, again, I when they said oh we're gonna go and do some music now, I remember thinking, yes, like finally something that sounds like fun, but it was crap because they didn't have any proper instruments, they just had like a do you know those like washboard things where you get a stick? But it was an I think it was an actual washboard and a stick, and they were like up and down the washboard with this stick. We had we each had one of those, and there were some triangles, which are crap, that's like the worst instrument going, I think. No one wants to play the triangle. There were no guitars, no piano, no drums, nothing that was that I was interested in. I think there may have been like two recorders that the lucky kids kind of nabbed early on and wouldn't let anyone else have a go on. So that was all a bit crap as well. Oh no, oh, and there were also a couple of xylophones, but you know, not proper xylophones, they're like the ones you would buy in a pound shop, like tiny little plastic things with four notes on them that none of the notes are in tune. There was that as well. Didn't enjoy that. We wrote stories, I think. We had to stand up and read our stories out to everybody, which as I remember it, none of the kids enjoyed any of this stuff. The the teachers seemed to think they were doing a brilliant job at you know looking after us, but I can't remember any of us enjoying this, it was all a bit crap. Anyway, though, the reason that I'm bringing this story up at all is because I was forced to learn a very valuable lesson during this week, and it all came to a head. I think it was on like the the day before the last day, so it was like on a maybe probably the Thursday, I'm guessing. And outside of this school, they had like a little tiny playground area with it had like a really crap, tiny little slide, and a little you know, those kind of it's like a micro tree house that's like a it's not a climbing frame, it's just like a it's got one level that's about two feet off the floor, it was crap. So we were all outside running around this thing. As I remember, it's me and some of the boys were playing uh British Bulldog, you know, where you run across the playground at each other, the the game that was like famously banned. We were doing that anyway. It got to the point where we've been outside for long enough, so the teachers were saying to us, right, you've got to come back inside now, and we're gonna do whatever it was. Art, as I remember, we're gonna go and draw some pictures. So everyone was running around sort of trying to tidy up the mess they made because the teachers were barking orders at us, and then as the queue kind of formed outside the building and everyone ran off. I looked down on the floor next to the slide, and I saw this Casio calculator watch, and it was a watch that there's this boy that I made friends with while I was there, the only person I made friends with, his name was Shane, I think. And we just I don't know, I say friends, we just we sort of chatted a bit and you know, kind of got along okay, even though it was all a bit awkward. And I'd noticed all week that he had this watch, it was I remember it was a cool watch, it was this Casio calculator watch, you know, with the buttons where you can you can do sums on it and it comes up on the screen. He had that watch right, and this day when everyone queued up outside in the playground, this watch was on the floor by the end of the slide, and it's it'd obviously fallen off his wrist when he was going down the slide or something. And this weird thought came over my mind. I was like, Oh my god, there's that watch, and a little bit a bit of me, I think, was excited just to be able to hold it and to sort of fiddle with it. So I picked it up and I pushed the buttons on it a few times. I was like, Yah, that's so cool, and then in a heartbeat, I don't know why I did it, I just stuck it in my pocket, and then I ran back towards the classroom where everyone had queued up, and just as I reached the queue, I heard the teacher at the front say, Right, Shane says that he's lost his watch. Has anyone seen a calculator watch? I looked around and saw Shane standing at the front next to the teacher, looking a bit upset, like he was about to cry because he'd lost his watch, right? No one answered when this question was asked, right? Then the teacher said, Okay, right, everyone, we're all gonna look around the playground and we're looking for a Casio calculator watch, and I think that's the moment, that's the point where I'd made a decision, the wrong decision, and I didn't tell anyone that I had it in my pocket. I went around looking for it like a little prick. Oh, but I still feel so bad about this. I walked around looking for it everywhere with everyone else. I don't know how long this went on for, but it felt like a long time that we were all looking for this watch, and eventually the teacher called it and said, I could hear her. She was like, Oh, are you sure you didn't leave it inside, Shane? Because it's obviously not out here. Maybe you left it in the classroom or something, or so we all kind of went inside, gave up looking for the watch, and as we went inside, we were told to grab our lunchboxes and bring them in to the classroom before we did our art project, wherever it was. So I went to my bag in the cloakroom, my drawstring bag with my jumper in it and my lunchbox, and I took I waited till no one was watching, and like a sneaky little bastard, I took the watch out of my pocket, stuck it in my bag, rummaged around and hid it in not just at the bottom of the bag, but I actually wrapped it up in my jumper in the bag so that no one would find it. And I took my lunchbox out, walked off back to the classroom, and Shane sat next to me, and he was obviously upset because he'd lost his watch, and he he was talking to me about his watch, and I don't know why I did it, but I literally was trying to console him about losing his watch. Oh then the sort of the lesson started where we were all doing art, I don't know what we were, we had to draw pictures or something, and as we were doing it, I could hear him, he was like snivelling because he lost his watch. And halfway through this art lesson, the um the sort of weird giddy excitement that I had from stealing this watch, oh it's awful, it kind of got too much, and I thought I just want to go and see it and like you know check on it, sort of thing. So I asked the teacher if I could go to the toilet, and I went to the toilet through the cloakroom, and as I went past my drawstring bag, I had to look over my shoulder, made sure no one was watching, stuck my hand in, and the watch was gone, and my heart sank so hard because do you know I spent ages fiddling around with my jumper in there, like it's gotta be in here. I put it in here, and it wasn't wasn't there, I couldn't feel it anywhere, so I sort of feeling a bit you know like red in the face and a bit awkward. I kind of went to the toilet, came out, washed my hands, came back, and on the way back I checked again in my bag and it absolutely wasn't there. I checked and checked and checked and checked. Then this sinking feeling came over me that someone must have gone in my bag and taken it out. But if someone had gone in my bag and taken it out, then they must have known that I was the one that had it or I'd I'd taken it. Oh the stress. I remember going back to the the art lesson and literally spending I don't know how again, I don't know how long it was, but it felt like about a week that I was sat sat in that room next to Shane, snivelling, the whole time, knowing that someone in the room had gone in my bag, got this watch out, and had obviously knew that I had it in my bag, otherwise I wouldn't have gone in there. Oh my god, the pressure was so so so bad. And then after that, after we'd done this art lesson, we had lunch in the hall, and when we went into the hall, I was sitting down eating lunch, and Shane wasn't there, he wasn't there in the room at all. All the other kids were there, me and the other kids, but he wasn't there. And then after a while, he walked through the door wearing the watch, and the teachers were both staring at me with a kind of grin, like an evil smirk on their face, as if you know we figured you out. There you go, with his watch is and then when he sat down, they came to the front of the hall and they said, I just want to let everyone know that we found Shane's watch, so you don't need to worry about looking for it anymore. And that's all they said. And then the whole rest of the day, all I could think about was when is this coming? When are these teachers gonna pull me in and drag me over hot coals? Because it's gonna come at some point, they they know that I took it. They went in my bag and they got it out again, they gave it back to him, and then they stared me out when they were telling the whole group that they'd found his watch, and I was on edge the whole day. I remember like you know someone walk up behind you, and you I would jump out of my skin. I thought it was a teacher coming to tap me on the shoulder and drag me off to a separate room or something, but but it never came. I never heard anything from the teacher, they never said anything to me, I didn't get in any trouble, nothing happened, right? Until I got home, and I didn't I didn't even see these teachers talking to my parents, to my mum, right? I never saw that, so I don't know when they did it, but when I got home, mum again, mum played it cool as a cucumber, she didn't say anything to me the whole way home in the car, and I kind of thought I couldn't believe my luck that I'd gotten away with it, that no one had said anything to me. And then I got home, and when I got home, I went upstairs in my bedroom, and I could hear some sort of conversation, like you know, raised voices downstairs, and then I got called down, sat down on the back step by my granddad, and he just said to me straight away, Did you take a boy's watch today? Did you steal it? And then I just fell apart, everything went to pieces, I confessed everything, and oh my god, I got in so much trouble. I had you know, every single adult in the house at some point took me aside and gave me a bollocking. And you know the worst of it is that I didn't even I don't even know why I took it. I wasn't someone I wasn't a kid who goes around stealing things. I you know I'd been brought up well, I had a really good family, I had good morals. I don't know why I did it, it was just an opportune opportune moment. I just saw this watch on the floor and I was like, oh, there's that watch, and I was excited and stuck in my pocket, and then when they said, Oh, we need to go look for this watch, that moment there, that's that's where I could have just said, Oh, I found it, here it is in my pocket, I could have just said that then, but for some reason I didn't, and then I went with it, and then you know when you get too far down this road of treachery and you've you the lie is too big that you can't then go back on it, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse as the day went on, and oh I feel like it's good to get this off my chest because I've not really spoken to anyone about this since when since it happened, but I just I still feel a bit sick that I actually did it. It makes me feel sick to think that that poor boy lost his watch and then the asshole that stole it sat next to him and was trying to calm him down and cheer him up about the whole thing. What was I on? I don't know, I've I don't know what um I don't know why I did that. Ugh, yeah, it does feel like a weight of my mind to talk about it. Oh my god, it's horrible. Now I'm thinking about did you know did I ever steal anything else when I was a kid? And the only other thing that I can remember was when I was really young, like four or five or something, I walked down to the corner shop with um my friend's dad, and he he'd gone down there to pay for his newspapers or something, and um as we were in used to be called Martin's news agents, he was talking to the shopkeeper at the front, and while he was there, I went off to the penny suite section around the back, and I watched both of them the whole time while I stuck my hand in the you know those little banana suites. I basically took one of them, it's a penny suite. I took that and I stuck it in my pocket, and as we walked outside, all that he said to me as I walked out, this is my friend's dad, we walked outside, and I thought I'd gotten away with it scot free. We walked outside and he just said, I see that. That's all he said, and he never said any more about it. But then I remember coming back to their house, and I still had this banana suite in my pocket, and I knew that he knew, and I I still wanted to eat it, but I felt guilty about eating it. I didn't Really want to eat it, but I did, but I didn't, and I I ended up eating it, but it was like a guilty pleasure. I didn't I didn't enjoy it because the whole time I knew I was in trouble, and oh yeah, so that was my brief career in thievery. I don't think I've ever stolen anything else in my life. There was a time when I was about 18 years old, and I'd just passed my driving test, and a friend of mine, who I won't mention his name, one day asked me if I wanted to buy a um car stereo, and I was like, Oh, well, have you got one you're getting rid of? And he said, Oh, yeah, I got it last week, but um, I don't really want it, so if you want it, I'll sell it to you. And it when he showed it to me, it was like a really, really high-end, really expensive, they used to call them hedge units, um, like a stereo for my car. It had like a CD player in it, it had a little screen, it was like really good alpine, it was called, and um he sold it to me for really cheap, and he never really admitted it, but I knew all along, I think, that someone that he knew, a friend of his, had stolen it and then sold it to him, and then he sold it to me. And um when he when he did when I paid him and he gave it to me, I saw that there were wires hanging out the back of it, so some poor sod somewhere had had their radio their stereo nicked out of their car, and he sold it to me. And I've I've literally felt guilty about that for years as well, because it's one of those things that I kind of didn't know, but I had strong strong uh assumptions that it probably was stolen and I just bought it anyway. And it yeah, it's one thing if something I don't know, I just think some poor soldiers lost their stereo, and I've just I've just included myself in that by buying it because there are loads of things that when you're younger you do that don't really have they don't hurt anyone, you know when someone sells you a pirate DVD or something and you think oh yeah, it's all you know it's that's not like a legal thing to do, but no one's really getting hurt. If anyone's getting hurt, it's like a big Hollywood film company, and yeah, it's there's not like a I don't know, it doesn't feel the same, but yeah, so I've I've never stitched anyone up or stolen anything other than the watch off of Shane, this car stereo, and then a um I didn't steal the car stereo either, they were just sold to me and uh a penny suite when I was four. So yeah, I've got that off my chest, I feel better now. Um I wonder if anyone else, I wonder if if that kid that kid, that guy Shane now, I wonder if he still remembers that happening because if he does, he probably would have been told by the teachers that I they'd found it in my bag, and if and if they did tell him, he probably thought, what an arsehole, like he was like sitting next to me talking to me about, you know, saying, Oh, don't worry, we'll find it, and things like that. So he probably thought I was an absolute scumbag. Well, to be fair, that was a real scumbo thing to do. So I've got no defence here, that was awful, but yeah, I learned a valuable lesson that day. Do not steal stuff, and especially not from someone that you know, that's just sadistic. I don't know why I would do that. I still don't know what was going through my mind. I don't know. Yeah, so it's weird those um those clubs that companies sort of put up for their their staff so they've got free childcare for a week. I've never seen anyone else that's done that nowadays. Maybe it's just I'm in the wrong company, but I've never been offered that before, and I've never known anyone who has been offered it either. Maybe it's just like a thing that happened back in the 90s. I don't know. It's weird though, like I can't imagine saying to my kids, right, you're gonna go to this random school now with a bunch of strangers, and we're gonna leave you there for a week so that we don't have to pay to have you looked after. It's mad, isn't it? Or it feels mad now. Maybe people still do do it. I'm not I'm not um putting it down if there is something you do because you know, here's what it is, isn't it? It's I suppose it's a bit like at my kids' school, they have a thing called um wise owls where parents can drop their kids off in the morning before school and then after school as well, they can pick them up late, but they have they have to pay for that though, so it's not the same thing at all, actually. Come to think of it. I don't know, but yeah. Anyway, I've had a little therapy session here getting my my thievery, my kleptomania childhood out in the open, so that's a weight of my mind. Um, and I feel lighter, so yeah. Uh I should say as well, disclaimer, if you or anyone you know have been affected by thievery in the past, then please feel free to reach out. I wonder if I'll ever strike again. Hopefully not. I hope my kids don't do anything like that either because oh my god, I'd feel so oh, I'd feel awful if they did that. They wouldn't though. My kids are way too nice to ever do anything that horrible. See you next time.