Shopping Trip

Kids have it easy today.

I stopped at the store this afternoon after work to pick up milk and bread (miraculously, I walked out with only milk and bread). Walking in from the parking lot there were two men and two boys standing to the left side of the front door. One man was wearing a blue sweater and a name tag, the other, a white hard hat, and a red apron over an all white uniform. The man in the apron had his hands spread out with many 'things' in them. Mr. Name Tag had one hand out alternately pointing to a kid and giving him the give me hand wave, then to the other.

The kids, wearing big pants and hoodies, were digging in the left pocket, then the right and pulling out 'things'. It didn't take long for me to get what was going on. The kids had been caught shoplifting. The things...packages of candy. Just as I got up to the gathering, a man, wearing a bizarro flamboyant tie-dyed hoodie, with his hand up in the air. In his hand, money. "Hey, I'll pay. If you don't want to call the cops, I'll pay for the kid's candy." Really? How are they supposed to learn anything? 


Shaking my head, I entered the store. When I passed the other entrance, the two store employees came in with their arms loaded. Between the two of them, they had a good-sized shoe box full of candy. Well, if they had a box it would have been full. The men were alone, so they must have let the kids go. Still not learning anything, but now they won't benefit from their un-learning episode.

Had that happen 'in my day' parent-city. Of course, we wouldn't have been allowed to be wandering around a shopping mall alone at that age anyway!