Learning the Hard Way that Stealing is Stupid!

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?

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I might have been ten years old, and my aunt sent me to the store for snuff. We were poor, so there were no sweets, except for once and a while having blackberry cobbler from the blackberries that my cousin, my sister, and I walked miles to collect. I wanted some chocolate, and I had always seen it come packaged in silver paper.

So, while picking up the snuff, I noticed a small package with silver paper in the freezer section and decided that it would be alright to take it. With no one looking, I slipped it, cold and wet, in my pocket. I didn’t think about it being against the law or that I might go to jail. That might have stopped me.

So, with the greatest anticipation of the sweet taste of that chocolate, I bit into the package, and was surprised when it was not sweet at all. It was yeast! I was very unhappy! I could have embarrassed my aunt and received the worst whooping of my life because of a pack of yeast!

I never stole again, because that was the most nerve-racking moment of my life until then. Stealing was stupid, and it wasn’t worth the stress and the potential consequences. I taught my children to think twice before breaking the rules or the law. Ask themselves if the benefits of their actions outweigh the consequences or the costs, and then decide according to what makes sense. Of course, more than once they thought the benefits were higher until they paid the consequences. But I remembered that I was stupid at a young age, and I learned to be merciful!