It was her first verifiable crime. Albeit, a crime that few District Attorney’s would take to prosecution.
Havana and I went shopping for ink and car batteries. Meandering around the office supply store so as to get in and out as quickly as possible, Havana was in awe. The high ceilings, the bright colors, the light and of course the candy shelves at kids’ eye level. Usually Havana gets to point and yell to me before facing the inevitable denial of her candy request. Today she picked up some sugar and chocolate item packaged in a flashy wrapper. “We don’t buy candy babe, you know that” I reminded her. She knew that, but maybe she thought that on the millionth visit to a store she would get her wish. 999,715 visits to go.
After purchasing the ink, the clerk handed me the bag. It was lightweight enough for a three year old to carry, and good work training. “Yes, I can carry that Daddy.”
We went into the Auto supply store and went up to pay for the battery. Once again, even at the Auto store there was kids’ eye level candy: tons of it.
As I picked her up into her car seat in the front of the truck she tugged the plastic bag she held firmly. “D’you want me to take that, girl,” I enquired. She replied, all adult-like, “that’s okay daddy.”
As we got home, she rushed in the front door and spilled the bag onto the coffee table with a red shiny bag of skittles skidding out across the tabletop. “Where did that come from,” I asked. These days Havana’s boilerplate response to any wrong-doing, large or small, is a complete and utter denial. “Where did the candy come from?” I asked again. “Nowhere” she replied. She sunk into the sofa. She knew she had broken some inane adult rule, but she wasn’t sure which one. Whatever she’d done wrong she realized the distance between her and her candy was going to widen.
“Did you take it from the office store or the auto store?” I asked.
“I didn’t take it.” Figuring the loss of candy possession was building too much emotion into the moment I moved on to the moral of the situation. I held back from saying that stealing was wrong. We live in a society based on stealing from the working class, so stealing will always be based on who is stealing and who is getting stolen from. “Havana, stealing from a store will get you in trouble,” I lectured. When Havana is old enough to know the whens, hows and ifs of shoplifing, she will know how not to get caught. But that’ll be several years down the road.
At 3 years of age, there’s a lot of lecturing going on about rules. It’s annoying from the parent’s perspective, but necessary. Kids are little adults with less experience, and helping them learn to be independent, dialectically entails a lot of rules.
I was of course a little proud that some massive corporate store lost 25 cents worth of profits and that Havana unawares of the big wheels that turn capitalism had played a large role in this miniscule dent.
