Pen Theif

This is my first paper for my english comp class i'm in right now. thought you'd maybe like to read it.


We were grocery shopping in the best store in the history of all time. At least to a hungry seven-year-old it was the best. When we walked through Sam’s glass doors, my little sister and I walking beside my mom who pushed a cart with my baby brother in his little baby carrier in it, every one of us would smell why it was the best store ever. It was the smell of at least five different food samples set up throughout the store. My stomach always seemed to turn into a never ending cavern when we would visit Sam’s. My tummy’s growl would echo through the skyscraping aisles of boxed foods. Our noses were always fixed in an upward sniffing pose, so we could sense when one of those hunched over old ladies were right around the corner with her cart of quarter sized samples of tasty free foods to serve to us with a smile from beneath a hairnet.

On one such grocery store trip, we had finished and were all lined up at the checkout, little brother and sister in the cart and me beside my mom. I remember my mom was so much taller than me. That seems like an obvious statement, but she was. She lived up in the clouds of adult land where they were all super tall. Adults spoke a language I didn’t quite understand. They had big reasons for their every little action and harsh, almost irrational reactions to match. Now that I live in this world of tall people as one of them myself, I was shocked to discover that the air they breathe is in fact quite similar to the air I grew up on. They were not chemically altered, just older and perhaps more understanding than I had originally supposed. Right at that moment, my ethereal mother was focused on loading the groceries onto the conveyor belt-thing and I was focused on the wall of candy to my right, drooling.

A minute later, my mother’s voice drifted down to me from the clouds pleasantly, “Bree, could you grab me my pen, hon’?”

I looked back up at her. Her attention had already returned to the checker, her hair a long, brunette curtain between me and her face. I was on my own.

A pen. I could do that. I was the oldest after all. I could find a pen.

My eyes flew about my immediate surroundings in search of a pen for my mom. Candy wall; no. Cart with brother and sister; no. My mom, obviously no. The checkout opposite ours; yes! There resting on the cash register of the adjacent checkout were two blue pens resting on the lip of the grey register. What could he possibly need two pens for? The man guarding the register had his back to me; he was helping a woman on the other side of his counter.

I glanced back to my mom. Her eyes were still fixed on what she was doing.

Sluggishly, I turned back to the man with the two pens in sight sitting side by side, unused on his register. I knew what I had to do. I reached up and took one. And just as my hand began to pull that blue and white pen away from the man, he turned and looked right at me. I froze. He just looked at me. His thin lips turned down in a disgusted manner that matched his eyes which were poking holes into my resolve. I tingled with fear. My mouth stood open and I felt like my eyes must have been taking up the majority of the room on my face, they were so wide. This man was going to call the police. I was going to jail. Maybe mom didn’t need the pen this much. But it was in my hand and the man had already seen me. I was already doomed.

I spun round and gave the pen to my mom.

She looked at it, sort of confused. I stared up at her, waiting for her grateful response. Instead she quirked a half smile at me and questioned lightly, “Where’d you get this?”

Wordlessly, I pointed a thumb at the man behind us, somewhat astounded that she cared where it came from and nervous that she somehow knew the crime I’d committed to attain the pen. I felt compelled to explain myself. She would know the truth before they carted me off. “You said to get you a pen and I couldn’t find any, but he had two so I took his.”

“Oh, I meant that one.” She smiled at me easily and pointed at the floor. There on the grey cement was a red pen. It guffawed at me. I picked it up and gave it to my mom, who gave me a distracted “thanks, honey” and returned to loading the purchased food into the cart after dropping the villainous pen into her purse.

We walked out of the Sam’s and no one came to arrest me. I was home free. It wasn’t until a few years later that I understood why the man with two pens didn’t have me tossed in jail. All the same, I never was comfortable in Sam’s again. In my mind I was a wanted criminal there. They probably had my picture from the surveillance cameras. I was not welcome in the store of yummy sample foods.

Perhaps I was an overly dramatic kid.

Somehow this need to always look over my shoulder still sticks with me. Like any moment, a police officer or a teacher or an elder from church will realize that I am a pen thief. I realize that now that I am an adult, I should be able to look back at this moment and laugh and I do try to, but honestly thinking of it sends me right back to that store and injects me full of the hunted feeling that pervaded me that day. I have learned over time though that fears are often irrational and that the best way to defeat them is to live your life anyway. That’s what I do.

End Paper. We were required to write an author's note as well. so here you go.

I chose this event because it was something I remember very vividly. It was also a scene that I knew was short enough that I could really pay attention to the detail. Also it was something that
I knew affected me…Even if I hadn’t figured out how, yet.

When I decided that I would use the pen thieving incident, I drew up a little sketch of the main points I knew I wanted to have and wrote it out. I guess I tried to put myself back in the moment as much as I could and tried to remember not just that moment but other stuff from my childhood. Like I remember looking up at my mom all the time and wondering how the heck someone gets so tall.

To show the significance of the moment, I tried to explain exactly what I thought would happen as if it were real. I was convinced that I would get arrested for that; there was no doubt in my mind. I wanted to convey the irrational thought to the reader like it was completely rational, to try and show them where I was coming from. I think that might have been why it was so hard for me to add in reflections about where I am now.

Writing this really made me think about how completely groundless this fear is. All of it was a misunderstanding. It also helped me to make the connection between this event and my fear of anyone with authority over me. It still freaks me out to buy things myself. I don’t go into stores by myself; I always have friends with me. I try to have the money out to pay as soon as I can so I can leave without any hiccups. It’s not just that, though. It’s when I drive by police men. It’s in school, I try to disappear into the other students and do the work so there’s no reason for teachers to come after me. But I know that just by living life, day by day and being conscious of my fear helps me overcome it. I am a teacher now, I teach swimming lessons. So that part of the fear is pretty much extinct. I figure that if I go through the check out enough, someday it will be no problem.

Even though this event was a vivid one, it still was a long time ago and some of the details are fuzzy. I just had to make up new ones. I also had a really hard time with sticking the reflection in there. Maybe it is such a negative event to me, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because I still haven’t figured out why it affects me so much. Just because I know I shouldn’t be afraid doesn’t mean I’m not. That frustrates me. I also felt like the reflections were just hard to fit in, like it almost didn’t make sense for me to put it in. It seemed to interrupt the flow for me. The story is very much written from the perspective of a seven-year-old; it felt weird sticking in an adult’s perspective.

All in all, I’m satisfied with the essay. I think it has a gradual build. I like the humor it has in it. I like the dialogue, how it is the catalyst to my conflict. I don’t like the reflections. I think they came out awkward. I like it right now, but next week I probably will have changed my opinion.