That Time I Stole Something and Almost Got Caught

"...and I regret."

When I was a teenager, music was everything to me. It wasn’t just a form of entertainment; it was a big part of my identity. By the time I hit middle school all my old Star Wars posters had come down and been replaced by pictures of Motley Crue, Metallica, and Ozzy Osbourne. I sorted my friends into groups based on the music they listened to: I had my heavy metal friends, my alternative friends, and my rap friends. One time while flirting with a girl I asked what kind of music she was into. When she couldn’t name a single band or even a song she liked, I lost interest in the pursuit. I knew then and there it just wouldn’t work out.

A subset of one’s music collection could be found in a person’s car. There were people who kept a few cassettes scattered around their center console and in their glove compartment, but real music aficionados like myself carried tapes around in large briefcase-sized cases. Most of those cases held 30 cassettes — three rows of ten — but I ended up with a double-sided one that held 60. The top of the case was filled with 30 metal tapes while the backside was split between rap and alternative. (In what world would an animal put the Cult next to the Cure?) The collection was painstakingly curated and sorted — not alphabetically, but by bands and subgenres. By the time the early 90s rolled around, the metal tapes had to make room for a row of grunge.

One band I never got into was KISS. I was too young to experience the first wave of KISS with makeup, and the 80s version of KISS dressed in neon seemed geared toward the ladies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a lot of KISS’s earlier material now, but if I had my choice between Metallica’s Master of Puppets and KISS singing “Tears are Falling,” put me squarely in camp Metallica.

In the fall of 1989 a friend of mine invited me to go to the state fair with him and some of his friends — a group of guys I knew of, but didn’t know well. I had just turned sixteen and was old enough to go to the fair on my own. When I was a kid, going to the fair with my parents was all about walking through the buildings, looking at livestock, and eating food. Now, as a teen, the fair was all about the midway — the rides, the sideshows, and the nightlife.

I don’t remember whose car we rode to the fair in that evening, but I could tell it wasn’t my crowd by the music we listened to: Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and KISS. This was all new to me. Everything about the evening was just a little off.

After parking we entered the fair and made our way down toward the midway. To get there we had to walk through a long line of vendors. Each vendor sat underneath a tent with half of their goods inside their tents in the shade and the rest spread out on tables, cooking in the sun. And while the stuff they hawked inside the various buildings was crap that didn’t interest me (Gunsu knives and knock-off sunglasses), the vendors lining the way to the midway contained a goldmine of treasures for teens. We’re talking small mirrors with band logos on them, bandanas, belt buckles, knives, handcuffs, and Chinese throwing stars, all baking in the heat under a mixture of smells: body odor, fried food, and weed.

When I was a little, little kid — four, maybe five years old — my grandma took me to the grocery store with her. While there I saw a Brach’s Pick-a-Mix stand. These stands had bags which customers could fill with hard candies and caramel squares and buy them by the pound. I knew that the candy was not free, but having it all out there was too tempting for me. I reached over into one of the bins and picked a piece of candy. I then circled the display with the candy hidden in one of my hands, desperately trying to open it somehow within a closed fist. When that didn’t work I turned around to lean up against the display and, with both hands behind my back, opened the candy. With one hand I slipped the wrapper into my pants pocket while then pretending to cough — again, I was five years old — and slipping the candy into my mouth.

Lest you think I was too young to understand what I was doing, I was positive that the minute I ate the candy, sirens would go off. Each time an announcement on the PA system would begin I just knew they would be shouting my name — or worse, paging my grandmother. It was too much for me to take, even as a child. I never again stole anything from anyone.

Until that day at the fair.

I don’t know what made me do it. It was a crime of opportunity, really. Sitting on the very edge of a table I was passing I saw a tape: a copy of KISS’s latest “greatest hits” album, Smashes, Thrashes, and Hits. The tape was so close to the edge that, had anyone bumped the table, the tape would have fallen into the street.

In a timespan of less than five seconds I spotted the tape, realized the vendor was inside his tent and could not see me, and — as I walked by — snatched the cassette from the table and dropped it into my pants pocket as I passed by.

Immediately someone walking behind me shouted, “Hey! That kid just stole a tape!”

What I should have done was play it off as a joke before walking up to the vendor and paying for the tape. That’s not what happened. Instead I panicked and began to run. I ran as fast as my stubby little legs could propel me. I darted in between couples and around families through a crowded midway. After a block of running I began cutting in between tents, zig-zagging my way toward the rides as if a sniper was taking shots at me. I didn’t know at the time that nobody was chasing me. In my heart it was a fight or flight moment, and baby, I was flying!

According to Google, approximately 82,000 people a day attend the Oklahoma State Fair. I was wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans and it’s a good bet thousands of other kids were dressed just like me. Finding me again would have been like finding a needle in a haystack, but that didn’t seem to slow my pulse.

In the days before cellphones, getting separated from your party was a pretty big deal. There I was, with 82,000 other people, no sign of my friends, and no ride home. I’m sure I had a quarter in my pocket for a payphone (my mother wouldn’t have let me leave the house without one) but didn’t want to use it. Even if I called my mom for a ride home, how would I make my way through the SWAT teams that were surely waiting for me just outside the gates?

Eventually I did catch up with my friend and his pals, right outside the Man Eating Chicken tent (a story for another day). I’m sure we rode some rides and went to a few sideshows but frankly I don’t remember anything else about that night, other than the fact that I spent the entire evening waiting for someone to recognize me and yell for the nearest cop to arrest me.

On the ride home that night, I pulled the tape out of my pocket. “Hey, put this on,” I said. Finally, I had an “in” with the KISS crowd.

The tape, of course, was damaged. No audio would play from the right channel. I had half a copy of KISS’s Smashes, Thrashes, and Hits… the left half. Whether the vendor knew it was bad or it had been damaged by sitting out in the sun, I never knew. All I knew was, it hadn’t been worth it. Even if the tape had been brand new and undamaged, it wouldn’t have been worth it.

I kept that tape in my tape case for the longest time. I never listened to it, but I kept it there as a reminder. Every time I looked at it I got a pit in my stomach.

And, true story, a few years later someone broke into my car and stole, among other things, all my cassette tapes. Including that one.