🔺 TAP 🔺

My buddy and I were about to pull off the heist of the century—at least, that’s how it felt because we were only in the sixth grade. We were on our way home from a friend's house on a blistering summer afternoon. Cutting across Buckeye, one of Abilene’s two main drags, we found ourselves in the Bogaart's grocery store parking lot. As we approached the grocery store, we spotted a stack of the old wooden kind of soda cartons filled with glass Pepsi bottles in front of the right corner next to an alley. If memory serves me right, my partner-in-crime suggested we swipe a couple of bottles, “Come on, man, it’ll be easy. All we have to do is grab a bottle and head down the alley. It’s a piece of cake!” he said. It was peer pressure, plain and simple. I couldn't appear yellow and chicken out! So we went for it; unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it, there was a grocery store clerk we didn't see in the parking lot.

The following hooligan events you are about to read are exactly how I remember them—almost nothing has been watered down.

My buddy was first to snatch a bottle, then me. As planned, we tore off as fast as we could down the alley. Maybe twenty yards along, I heard a gruff masculine voice holler, “HEY!” While running, I looked over my right shoulder and saw a man in a full white apron in hot pursuit sprinting towards me; it was the grocery store clerk! Terror and panic immediately set in, igniting thoughts a million miles a second. What’s going to happen to me? Will they call the cops? Will they put me in jail? What are my parents going to say, think, and do? Am I going to burn in hell?

Adrenaline flooded my body! Suddenly, I was jolted by the clerk’s hand grabbing me by my collar. Instantly, a cruel primal reflex spewed into action. That's right, I peed my pants! It was not your normal everyday pee! It was with a tremendous force, like the pressure of an out-of-control fire hose! It was the mother of all gushers! My jeans were soaked past my knees! I bellowed out to my buddy, “We're caught!” He slowed his pace to a stop and gave himself up. I know that was kind of a dirty, filthy weasel thing to do to my partner in crime, but I guess in the spur of the moment, I decided I didn't want to face the music alone. The clerk had us both by our collars in front of him, pushing us along through the Bogaart’s sliding doors. It was a walk of unbearable embarrassment and humiliation, people gawking and pointing at us as we were paraded down the grocery store aisle to the office. With my pee-soaked pants, I tried to hide my face as much as possible by looking down. The store manager took our names and called our parents. Our parents expressed their disappointment in us and apologized to the Bogaart’s manager. Mom and Dad took me home, grounded me, gave me a long lecture, and, of course, threw my pants in the wash. I was never so embarrassed and ashamed in my entire life. I mostly hung out in my bedroom and couldn't look them in the eye for quite some time. That was the end of my soggy career as a thief.

Lesson learned: crime doesn't pay—but it sure can spray.