I found a twenty-dollar bill in the kitchen the other day. Apparently abandoned, it lay there, face down, halfway buried beneath a fresh package of peanut butter cookies. Surrounded by bags of groceries, my wife’s purse sat on the floor beneath the twenty. There was no way to tell for sure whether it was her money.
I thought it through with great care. My conclusions:
1. She’d never miss it.
2. Those peanut butter cookies sure looked good!
That settled it. I opened the cookies, took two, shoved one into my mouth, stuck the twenty into my pants pocket, and swallowed. I was about to bite into the second cookie when my wife walked in and pointed at me.
“No more snacks before dinner and gimme back that twenty you palmed,” she said.
I fished the bill out of my jeans. “Wha…? How did that…?”
She snatched it out of my fingers. “Sweetie? Didn’t you ever learn that stealing was bad?”
Of course I did. I cupped my chin in my hands and gazed into the distance. Everything got all twisty and wavy…
The year was 1957. I was brash. I was bold. I was six.
Compared to other first-graders, I suppose my moral compass needed a little extra lubrication. Its rusty pointer found nothing to fault in my decision to steal fifty big ones from my mother’s open purse and go on a spending spree.
Two blocks down the hill from our house in Raleigh was The Store. Everybody who lived on Drury Lane in 1957 knew that fifty cents went a long way at The Store.
Walking through The Store with two quarters jingling loudly in my pockets, I struggled with an internal turmoil. I was a six-year old pickpocket, a sneak thief, foundering in a Faustian dilemma. I no longer wanted to spend the money. I decided to put it back. Or donate it to an orphan’s charity.
And then I saw the freshly-opened display box of individually wrapped bite-size peanut butter logs.
I could do great things with fifty of those. Advances in the fields of nutrition, medicine, physics, and science were at my fingertips. I could buy world peace. The orphans would simply have to wait their selfish little turns.
I had never held so many peanut butter logs in my hands before – riches beyond comprehension in a wrinkled brown paper sack. It was surreal. It was breathtaking. Then I remembered. I was two blocks from home.
Home? I could never go home again. Not with that overstuffed bag of peanut butter logs in my pudgy little fists. Mother would immediately know I had stolen the money.
I needed a Plan ‘B’.
When I finally worked out the details, even I was impressed. Plan ‘B’ was brilliant. It was foolproof. All I had to do was eat the evidence.
One after the other, I peeled the wrappers open and popped the little treats into my mouth as fast as I could chew.
I ran out of spit halfway through my seventh peanut butter log. My tongue was stuck and I needed water, but water was at home.
I’d never see home again unless I had a plausible reason for being in possession of fifty minus seven individually wrapped bite-size peanut butter logs.
But I didn’t have a reason and I couldn’t lie to Mother. She always knew when her sons were lying and her corrective retribution was swift and horrible. Plan ‘B’ was a failure.
I needed a Plan ‘C’.
The solution was both simple and magnificent. I rolled the bag tightly closed and tossed it casually onto the ground at my feet. I kicked dirt and leaves over my treasure, keeping a sharp lookout for any passerby taking too keen an interest in what I was doing.
The dirty work done, I walked away ten or twelve steps, then sped back to the bag’s shallow grave. I hadn’t completely covered it, so it was easy to find.
“Oh, boy!” I shouted, clapping my hands in ersatz glee. Prospective witnesses would swear under oath that I had never before seen my bag of individually wrapped bite-size peanut butter logs. My alibi established, I returned home triumphant, invulnerable.
I didn’t even need to hide the bag. Of course, Mother spotted it immediately.
“What’cha got in that old, filthy bag, Jon-Jon?” The game begins. Pawn to King’s Bishop.
“Nuthin’,” I said. Knight to Queen’s Pawn.
“Lemme see.” No problem. I handed over the bag and grinned as she opened it. Pawn takes Knight. Plan ‘C’ was in full motion.
“Where did you get this?” Bishop to King’s Rook four.
She took the bait! Now all I had to do was to tell her the truth and she’d have no choice but to give me back my bag of peanut butter logs.
“I found it in the woods. I dug it up.” Queen takes Pawn. Checkmate!
“WHAT? You didn’t eat any of these, did you? Tell me you didn’t eat any.” She was upset. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to give me my bag of candy and go back to making dinner.
My plan – my Great Plan – was unraveling. It was bursting into flames at Lakehurst. It was going down without enough life boats.
“How many did you eat?” Her voice was low and quaking.
“Seven?” I guessed. This wasn’t checkmate. Where had I gone wrong?
Mother was on the edge of full-blown panic. “Oh, God…stay right there. I’ll call the doctor – oh, I hope they’re not poisoned. No. No, I’ll call the police. They’ll know what to do. We’ll get your stomach pumped.”
Tears cascaded down her face. I never saw the endgame coming.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “What woods? We don’t have any woods.” Her tears dried instantly and she smiled at me. With teeth.
I had crafted the perfect chess match, but Mother had been playing poker.
What I carry today is not so much a scar as it is an inescapable and graphic reminder of a leather strap energetically wielded against my six-year old blue jeans. Most unforgettable of all was that night’s dinner – forty-three individually wrapped bite-size peanut butter logs.
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