This isn't cool dudes. This isn't cool at all.

I'm not sure I ever did this to be "cool" as if was generally a solitary activity for me. We moved as a family when I was in my mid-teens in the 70's and the move was not a pleasant experience for me. It was only to another part of NJ, but to me, it seemed as if we had moved to the end of the earth. I was a maladjusted teen to begin with, but now I was in an alien environment, where I knew absolutely no one. If I had been more socially adept, I suppose I could have fit in, but I wasn't socially adept, and I wasn't a "student" or athlete. I was an awkward, sullen teen who had very little money, and I began to steal. Friends from my old home-town had engaged in shop-lifting activity frequently and with seeming ease (I had known 2 cousins originally from Yonkers who used to engage in shop-lifting contests with each other). For me, it had always seemed to be a frightening pursuit (my Dad was a mellow guy, and never abusive, but he could be quite intimidating when enraged...fear of the police was secondary to fear of Dad in a towering rage). Ostensibly, my motivation for the theft was lack of money, although who can say what other emotional and/or psychological forces compelled me? What ultimately stopped me was nearly getting caught by a shop owner. I had slipped some magazines under my shirt and was about to walk out of the store, when some sort of instinctive alarm bell went off in my head. As surreptitiously as possible, I slid the magazines out from under my shirt and back onto the pile on the floor. As I started out, the owner intercepted me, lifted my shirt, and, upon finding no contraband on my person, said harshly, "Get the hell out of my store." Bewildered and unnerved, I hastened to comply. Later, I realized he had seen me in one of those convex-type mirrors that are common in stores nowadays but were less so back then (after all, I had shoplifted quite a bit and had never come close to getting caught before). Still, it had been too close a call, and I realized that my "luck" was inevitably going to run out sooner or later. So ended my "career" as a criminal, nipped in the bud by an observant sweet-shop owner with frazzled nerves. If only a young John Dillinger, or Clyde Barrow, had been so "lucky." (I suppose it would be perilous indeed to engage in such activity nowadays, given the sophistication of modern detection devices, alarms, cameras, etc.)

This was never cool to me, and I would not be part of it the few times any one in my crowd did it. Again, I feared my father too much to take such chances.

I used to steal, but would have more success doing it on my own. Stealing with other people made me nervous, and more likely to get caught. With the security nowdays, it would be stupid to steal.

This should go under the "Breaking the law" section. It's still stupid.