My Crime Spree

Sometime shortly after I healed from my broken leg, I began to get into trouble. We were often left to our own devices, us kids, and for me boredom + freedom = big big trouble. It started innocently enough. There was a "purchasing trailer" which at the time was located right next to Howdy Doody for some inconceivable reason. Inside the purchasing trailer were all sorts of goodies not regularly doled out to kids or other people at meals. This time, we discovered that the trailer contained variety packs, packs of those tiny boxes of delicious sugary cereals like froot loops and sugar smacks. We usually had cornflakes. Every day. Breakfast was cornflakes. So these variety packs were very enticing.

Jonas, that redheaded demon from my Poona days, told me how to sneak into the purchasing trailer to obtain the goodies. I did it and I stashed them under the sink in our makeshift communal kids' kitchen that was never in use. Yasha somehow found out about it and squealed. For that transgression, Sarv told Arun and me that we were not allowed to participate in the upcoming cookie and lemonade sale. The kids were busily baking cookies and fixing lemonade to sell at a stand, and we were all to share in the profits to buy candy and soda at the vending machines. No cookies, no lemonade, and no money for me.

I really wanted that money. I had been looking forward to lemon drops from that machine for a long time. That's when a plan sprouted in my tiny 7-year-old brain. I talked Garima into sneaking into people's trailers and searching for money. We would steal the money and buy candy. It was simple, yet brilliant. We started in this man's room, which was in the house nearest the kids' house. Jackpot. He had about $40. We took it. We decided that it was easy and we should move on. We went to Garima's mom's trailer and sacked all the rooms there for whatever we could find. On a commune, as you would expect, people didn't usually have much money, but what they had laying around, we found and took. We got excited.

We went to my dad's trailer and went around to each and every room in his trailer. We got greedy. And that, as it often is, was our downfall. One of the women that lived in my dad's trailer had a lot of gum and candy. The money wasn't enough, we decided to go through her candy and split it up. We got comfortable on her bed and began to divide the candy evenly, making sure nobody got more of anything. We were careless. The woman walked in and busted us. We ran out thinking we were lucky for only being caught stealing candy.

Unfortunately, the woman also told my father about our little adventure and he probed further. Someone else knew about the whole thing and told him about it. He was FURIOUS. I don't think I have ever seen my dad that angry, before or since, not with me. He called Garima and me into the school, which was located adjoining the kids' house. He spoke with Garima first and then sent her out. She looked stricken, though still alive. Now it was my turn. He took me inside and gave me a spanking. For the third and last time in my life, I received a spanking (the first was from my mother who spanked me after a friend and i drew with pen all over the walls of a room I had moved out of and into my "big girls' room" when I was four. She spanked me and said to my friend "i'd spank you too if you were my child, but i can't!" and then she made us clean it up with windex. The second spanking was from my dad when we lived in Poona and I was six. I was just being obnoxious, he couldn't tolerate it any more and he spanked me. He was admonished by my mom for that one.)

After the initial corporeal punishment, we were both told to go and give the money back to each and every person from whom we'd stolen and apologize to them. All told, we had stolen $82 and the gum and candy. We'd only spent about $1 each on lemon drops and soda when we were caught. Thus ended my crime ring.