The Button Bandit

My mom has always been very creative and crafty, and I grew up shopping in the fabric and craft supply stores alongside her. One day, when I was in 1st grade, she took me with her to the Yardstick, one of the few such stores in our vicinity. I loved the Yardstick, with its colors sprayed about the store in the forms of paints, pencils, fabric, thread... and buttons.

Buttons were my favorite. Whether they were brightly colored, shiny, or shaped like ladybugs and puppies, I wanted buttons. This particular day I was scanning the button rack, admiring the assortment I had seen a hundred times. Then the glass jar caught my eye. On the counter, right up there with the cash register, sat a jar full of buttons. These ones didn't come childproof, attached to the cumbersome little cards that usually read some ridiculously high price for two pieces of plastic. They were loose, and it looked like there were millions of them. I walked up to them and stuck my hand in the jar, swishing it around as I tried to "see" the diverse mixture with my fingertips.

When I saw the bright orange button that was twice the size of the rest, I clutched it and brought it out for a closer look. I don't know if it actually went through my head to steal this button, but either way it ended up in my pocket. In the car on the ride home, I realized it was in my jeans, and pulled it out to admire it yet again. My mom's voice pierced my silent adoration, "Heather, where did you get that?"

"At the store." Apparently my mind didn't work fast enough yet to think of an answer that would have kept me out of trouble.

"Did you pay for it? Because I didn't pay for it." If I had built up the courage to look my mom in the eyes, I probably would have seen astonishment and disappointment... in her voice these came in the form of irritation.

She would have known if I had tried to cover myself on this one: what six-year-old girl has her own stash that doesn't come from her mom's wallet?

"No."

So my mom did what every parent should do: told me that she was going to take me back to the Yardstick, and make me surrender my goods and admit that I'd stolen the button. I started screaming right then and there, begging my mom not to make me 'fess up. This was worse than the death penalty to me, since I was disturbingly shy and had never done anything publicly wrong in my entire life.

The tantrum anchored in fear went on and on, and suddenly I realized we had ended up back at home. Maybe it wasn't the best parenting choice, since I wasn't forced to learn my lesson, but getting off was the biggest relief I had ever felt. I'm pretty sure I was grounded, or had something confiscated from me that week, but I will always be indebted to my mom for having mercy on me. Without enforcing a punishment that fit the crime, and despite giving in to a six-year-old tantrum, my mom must have done something right. I kept that orange button, and never stole anything again.

At least until a few years later when I was particularly drawn to a pair of my neighbor Kim's Barbie high heels.