Here’s an interesting personal story that I’ve been prompted to revisit.

When I was around 12 years old, I was caught shoplifting. As I remember it now, 57 years later, I was trying to walk out of the store with a package of fireworks hidden under my clothes. I really enjoyed playing with July 4th fireworks, and in the past years had been given a lot of liberty to do so by my parents. Now, for reasons I did not understand, I was told I could not do fireworks on my own any more. July 4th was approaching, so I was quite upset with this new directive, and I felt like I needed to find a way around it. I remember thinking “I’ll show them.” I was not going to have my freedoms taken away.

It was not the first time I shoplifted. I think the stealing started when the price of penny candy suddenly doubled to two cents. I felt it was so unfair that I now received half the amount of candy for the same price, and I wanted to minimize my loss of purchasing power by “sneaking out” a few pieces of candy in my pocket in addition to the candy I paid for. I felt like I was the victim of a great injustice, and I was determined to fight back in the only way I could.

Now I had been caught stealing for the first time, “red-handed” as they say, and by a big-store security guard. I was scared and crying in the security guard‘s office in the back of the store, not knowing what would happen. My parents were called to come get me, and I knew I would be punished, but I didn’t know what my punishment would be. Well, it was “cruel and unusual”. The Beatles were popular at the time, and so was long hair for boys. I wanted to be like everyone else, so my hair was long. My military father decided to cut off all my hair, giving me a boot camp buzz-cut. I was to be shamed by having to stand out in public as a “marked” individual, for having committed a crime. It was a powerful psychological beating, and I wore a baseball cap whenever I could to hide my shame in the weeks that followed. Fortunately, it was summertime, and I was not in school among my peers, which lessened the psychological damage this punishment could have exacted on me. I survived with my fighting spirit intact, which has continued to benefit myself and others. I don't like injustice, for any one. Unfortunately, with true criminals running the world today, real justice is practically extinct.