EASTER is a time when we're supposed to think about goodness and sin, although I usually focus on egg-shaped candles, chicken-shaped soaps, and chocolates by local genius Thomas Haas.
This week, unfortunately, I'm forced to contemplate the fallibility of humans in my own sphere.
An expensive item recently went missing from a close friend's family home in Calgary. The only explanation possible is that somebody stole it. Because of the circumstances, it's clear that the most likely culprit is one of their teenage children's friends.
Now, this is a sad scenario. They treat their kids' chums well. Over the years they've fed them countless meals, driven them all over the city, sprung for restaurant food for them and taken many of them on family trips. All of these individuals are smart, nice young adults. But now, thanks to one thoughtless act, they're all suspects.
When you have something stolen from you, most people say they feel "violated."
The thief has entered your domain or your space and taken advantage of you in a callous fashion. I remember being enraged when somebody stole my purse from my car in Calgary, and even madder when somebody on the Downtown Eastside smashed the window of our rusty old Toyota just to get the one item in it - a potted hyacinth.
Our daughter Petunia still holds a grudge against the City of Victoria because a few years ago she spent an entire weekend there helping her father sell his cookbooks at a trade show. The event went well, but the pair made the mistake of leaving their cashbox in the car when they went into a restaurant for dinner. Somebody broke into the vehicle and stole the box, which likely financed a few pleasurable drug highs. The area, they learned after the fact, is notoriously crowded with junkies.
Petunia was a teenager at the time. Proud of herself for having worked so hard, side by side with her dad, she couldn't believe that anybody could be so selfish and unkind.
But thieves don't think about the repercussions of their actions. They give no thought to the victim of their crime. It's all about them.
A babysitter of ours, a family friend since her own toddlerhood, once stole a Walkman from our young daughter. We were shocked when we learned of this.
"Why?" we wondered. But there was only one explanation: she wanted it, it was there, and we weren't. That's the human impulse that allows people to steal from one another.
A more sympathetic adult friend tried to excuse this action by saying "Well, you guys have a lot of stuff and she hasn't. You can't really blame her."
That's a point of view that the thief herself might have offered, but I can't say I agreed with it, then or now.
Still, which of us has not stolen something? When I was in Grade 5, a friend and I went on a shoplifting spree. We'd hit the two local mom and pop stores regularly, deftly sweeping caramels and other penny candy into our pockets.
But my sense of guilt eventually caught up with me and I felt I had to confess to my dad. He was a social worker and former probation officer and, while stern about my and my siblings' childhood crimes, was always less emotional than our mum. He calmly marched me down to the candy stores and, with me standing beside him, informed them of what I'd done. He told them how much I estimated I owed them, paid them for the stolen candy out of his pocket, and got me to work off the debt in household chores.
I think this is the best punishment a kid could receive. The shopkeepers got their money back and had a heads-up to keep an eye on me, and I made amends. My conscience was cleared. Indeed, I could feel such a sense of superiority to pals who continued to shoplift through high school that, a few years later, when a boyfriend proudly showed me the Mars bar he had pilfered from a drug mart, I was able to be righteously disparaging.
Even at a young age, I knew that the argument that businesses are rich, and that they're basically stealing from us in the first place, was a ridiculous rationalization.
I wonder how people who spew that drivel to justify their own wrongdoing can sleep at night. When you steal, there are always consequences for somebody else. That's the truth, whether you're cheating the government and your fellow citizens by lying on your tax forms, or lifting a valuable possession from somebody who has always treated you as a family friend.
That is the epistle according to Going Coastal. Amen. Have a happy Easter, y'all.
