Let me start with the positive stuff.
In twelve years of public school and 4 years of University, I never skipped a single class just for kicks.
Also, I never sneaked1 out of the house to go party after my folks had fallen to sleep.
In fact, I never got drunk in high school2.
Never touched weed in high-school.
I was not straight-edge, but I loved being clear-headed.
And really, I only shoplifted once.
It was probably 1983, and it was at the Tweed Museum of Art on the Campus of the University of Minnesota, Duluth.3
I was with my guys Quack, Boo, and Klunner.
We were the eighth graders with skateboards that the campus cops were always shoo-ing away from the Red Room where most video games were 25¢ and Dragon’s Lair was 50¢.4
In retrospect, I wonder, did one of the guys5 put me up to shoplifting?
Was there a challenge?
Were we all trying to get away with stealing something that day as a team-building exercise?
Whatever the case, I slipped a clear blue plastic eraser in the shape of the Millenium Falcon in my pocket and made for the door.
But first I stopped at the counter to chat with the cashier and make it seem like all was kosher and nice, see?
I began to chatter nervously and picked up a balsa wood airplane from a box at the checkout there and excitedly announced that I absolutely had to have it and life had been empty without such a plane before and gosh-darn-it please take my money I’m outta here!!!
My eleven-year-old heart nearly beat out of its chest in my frantic exit.6
The rush of adrenaline was so intense that it turned me off to shoplifting forever after.
I recently read a piece about kid whose dad was addicted to shoplifting and would always to take him on runs.7
And then there’s Winona Ryder getting caught shoplifting in the early aughts.
Like, is it the adrenaline rush that makes people do it compulsively?
Maybe we’re hardwired as former hunters to need the threat of a chase to make the day seem normal?
After I retired from the grift, I should note, I still enjoyed throwing snowballs at cars and busses and getting chased—that adrenaline still appealed somehow.
But why?
Today marks the beginning of Volume 7 of “From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler.” Woot woot.
I was in Wisconsin for the holidays visiting my inlaws, and since I didn’t have my cassette cache with me, I opted for starting the new album with a song that existed on my phone in the form of a voice memo8. (Listen in the player below or watch the lyric video at the top of this page.)
“Tell Me What to Do With This” was recorded as an improv idea on November 9, 2018.
These are a few other things that happened that day:
I pretended to be Cameron the Camel for my Kids.
My daughter made me a snowball on the walk to school.
I shaved my head and looked at the world through rose colored glasses.
I remain your humble servant,
OX&C,
Faux Jean
Happy Tuesday!
I would say “snuck” but my sister kind of rides me on certain grammar things.
I’ve had friends talk of guzzling their parents mouthwash and wondered “how do you get to that point?”
Which was only a few blocks from my house.
chaps my hide to this day.
We considered ourselves a gang and we called ourselves the Aces.
It definitely sounded like a watch enveloped in cotton.
I think it was in Harper’s, but I’m not totally sure.
My daughter said I for sure need to do the lyrics over ‘cause they’re too scratchy.