High Price

given an easier option and no reason to challenge themselves, almost any teenager—and most adults, too—will take it.
    And so other than two to three hours of daily basketball practice—and of course, games—I barely spent any time in school. I’d been put on the “vocational-tech” track, which meant that I received school credits for working as a busboy at the café at Walgreen’s. I’d have class from eight to eleven; then I’d go to work. One-third of the time I spent in supposedly educational programming consisted of classes like parking patrol. But I always worked as many hours and as many jobs as I could get, following my parents’ example of being hardworking.
    Still, none of this meant that I didn’t sometimes engage in the same types of petty and ultimately not-so-petty crimes that people so often falsely attribute to the influence of drugs. The incident with the gun was only one of many criminal acts for which, luckily for me, I did not get caught. Starting at about seven, for instance, I’d been tutored in shoplifting by cousins Amp and Mike. Although a large proportion of the people in the neighborhood where I then lived were on welfare and receiving food stamps, no one wanted to be seen using them.
    In fact, we mercilessly teased people who were caught showing the multicolored bills when they were sent to the store to get milk or other groceries. There weren’t any supermarkets in the neighborhood, so we shopped at a strangely named chain of convenience stores called U’Tote’M, which was bought out by Circle K in 1983. They were usually owned by whites or Middle Eastern people. They hired white staff, usually bored teenagers who didn’t care much about their merchandise or their jobs. That worked in our favor.
    When my parents were together, we’d had no need for food stamps. But after they split up, I would be sent to buy groceries with them. It wouldn’t take long to find the few items like milk or eggs that were needed. What did take time was making sure I wasn’t seen checking out without cash. I’d hang back and wander the aisles, trying to make sure no one I knew was around. When the coast was clear, I’d pay. After my cousins taught me to shoplift, however, I started using what I’d learned taking candy bars and potato chips, to do the household shopping, too. This was another way I showed my cool—and got some much-needed extra loot.
    Our techniques weren’t exactly sophisticated. We’d wear baggy clothes and have someone distract the cashier while the rest of us tried to surreptitiously slide what they wanted under their shirt or down their pants. If the clerks had cared at all, they probably would have caught us, but I always got away with it. The only time I saw a kid get caught was when my cousin Bip slipped a comic book under his white T-shirt. The bright red of Spider-Man was clearly visible through the fabric. The clerk saw it and opened his mouth to start shouting at him.
    Immediately recognizing what had happened, Amp took charge. He began lecturing Bip himself. “I’m going to tell yo momma!” he yelled. “You know that’s wrong, what were you thinking?” He went on moralizing, while the clerk glowered, distracted by Amp’s speech from calling the police, searching the rest of us, or continuing his own lecture. He had no idea that Amp had put Bip up to it; nor did he know that we had our own stolen items concealed in our clothes. When Amp finished his performance, the clerk just glared at us and said, “Out.” Bip was thoroughly embarrassed.
    Outside later, we gave him even more hell, not just for getting caught but also for stealing something as useless as a comic book. Other than my sports books, none of us read anything, so we thought that stealing something to read, even a comic, was the height of hilarity. But Bip was so shaken by the whole event that I don’t think he ever stole with us again. He would later, in his twenties, serve time in prison for cocaine trafficking.
    Several other kids in my family also shoplifted from time to time. One of my sisters had a particular knack for changing the prices on items to get expensive items for almost nothing. This was before electronic tagging and inventory systems rendered her method obsolete. I was much more circumspect in what I’d do. It really had to be a sure thing for me. I had no intention of ever getting caught. For instance, when I was in middle school, we’d often hang out at a mall