Mom with the Sticky Fingers

I had posted on one of Kevin’s entries about the spirit of my kleptomaniac mother, and thought I’d share a few of my mother’s sticky finger moments.

Mom wasn’t really a shoplifter, per se. She didn’t go into stores wearing a trench coat so that she could stash things under it. But she was a firm believer in the idea that she should not speak up when the cashier made a mistake in her favor. Years later I am still reprogramming the part of my brain that won’t speak up, so that now I actually do speak up when the cashier makes a mistake—even when it’s in my favor.

Now when I do speak up when I am in that situation, I can almost feel my mother’s hand on my shoulder and her voice saying in Polish, presumably so the salesperson can’t understand what the imaginary voice is saying, “Quiet! You’re getting that for cheaper!” By not speaking up, Mom collected a variety of goods including a camera, and a sled for one of her granddaughters either for free or for some drastically reduced price.


The Legend of the Blue Bin
Mom was notorious for finding useful things on the side of the road as she was driving along. Sometimes she’d find a bungee cord that was in perfect condition, or she’d find tools that had fallen off of a truck. One day, when cities and towns first started collecting recyclables with the regular trash pick up, she came home with a blue bin that said “Western Massachusetts Recycles!” on it. We didn’t have trash pickup at the curb in our town at that time, so we didn’t see trash cans and bins on the street in our neighborhood.

She burst into the garage after coming home from work and said “Look at this great bin I found on the side of the road! This would be great to keep all the garden stuff in, wouldn’t it?”

“Um, Mom? That’s a recycling bin. Somebody put that on the side of the road so the garbage man would empty it.”

“Oops!” she laughed. That bin is still in the garage to this day. I think it contains a volleyball, and various odds and ends in the garage.

Ill-Gotten Umbrella
Several years before the blue bin incident, when Mom used to drive a school bus, she used to go on an outing with the other bus drivers at the end of the school year. One year they all went to Boston for the day. In the afternoon it began to rain as Mom and the bus drivers were shopping in Fanieul Hall. She walked into the Swatch store to buy an umbrella. She stood at the counter and waited for the clerk to finish talking on the phone. She waited for several minutes, and the clerk never acknowledged that Mom was waiting. Mom didn’t want to keep her friends waiting, so she put the umbrella back and left the store, figuring she’d come back for it later.

Awhile later, she went back to get the umbrella. The clerk was still on the phone, and Mom waited with cash in hand for the woman to stop talking. Again, the woman didn’t acknowledge that Mom was waiting. “I know how I’ll get her to pay attention,” she thought as she turned on her heel, umbrella in hand. She walked toward the door of the shop, then out the door. She turned and saw the clerk, still chatting on the phone, and opened the umbrella to shield herself from the rain and kept walking.