It’s true; I was once among the ‘Children of the Corn’

A while back I wrote a column detailing the nefarious criminal activities of my youth; namely, the theft from Cook’s Five and Dime of a penlight and two Spiderman comics. I was in fourth grade.

Apprehended by store security, I was turned over to the tender mercies of my old man. He didn’t ask me why I did it, didn’t make an appointment for me to see a counselor, didn’t ask a pediatrician to prescribe Ritalin. He did not wail and gnash his teeth, wondering where he and my mother had gone wrong.

He dragged me home and walloped the portions of my body usually associated with sitting until I no longer could. I did not steal again.

Except once.

It was the August following my foiled “flashlight caper.” I was as old as a kid is in fifth grade—a kid who flunked fourth grade the first time around, I mean.

My family, the whole troupe, was visiting my Grandma Seeley’s house, what we at the time called “the farmhouse,” despite the lack of an attached farm. Grandma’s house was sort of out in the country—what we city kids thought of as the country, anyway.

The visit followed the usual Sunday afternoon custom: mom and grandma in the kitchen putting up a big picnic lunch; dad, grandpa and Uncle Ray sitting around the back yard drinking tea, beer or whiskey; sisters and cousins pulling weeds from grandmother’s garden while my brothers foraged for nubbly toads beneath the rhubarb plants crowding thick along the side of the house.

I spent the afternoon as I often did, tramping through the nearby woods, carrying an old pillowcase in which to stash interesting pine cones, sparrow skulls or caterpillars. I was only ten minutes into my hike when the woods petered out and something I had never before imagined unfolded like a green and gold curtain before my eyes: an entire field full of corn, just growing wild!

I had always assumed corn was manufactured pretty much like everything else—in a Newark factory or possibly somewhere in Japan. To find it—and in such abundance, just growing out of the ground—well...I immediately set about filling the pillowcase with ear after ear of the free corn.

The scant biceps on my skinny arms stood out as I lugged the pillowcase back to the house.

There, to my surprise and dismay, I was chastised mightily for perpetrating such a heinous transgression and lectured on the dangers inherent in stealing from farmers. (It turns out farmers grow corn on purpose with the intent of selling it.) I was warned about the horrific afterlife awaiting those who break the Seventh Commandment. I was confined to the backyard for the rest of the day, lest I be tempted to appropriate any other “free” stuff I might find lying about.

But my grandmother, ever the pragmatist and not particularly concerned about what the Pope might have to say on the subject, stripped and boiled the corn anyway. The entire family partook of the delectable fruits of my misdemeanor, thereby sending a mixed message and confusing me unto this very day.

I still can’t pass a supermarket bin full of corn without wishing I had a pillowcase.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The world is full of criminals, at least among folks who read this column

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my early attempts to enter into a life of crime. I confessed to several misdemeanors, most committed while I was still a child and had yet to hear about what happens to guys like me in prison.

I was worried some readers might pen angry letters condemning me for my youthful malfeasance; I was instead inundated with confessions, some of which make my own crimes seem fairly petty.

I’d like to share some of those letters with you now. Since I’m a little fuzzy on that whole statute of limitations thing and can’t afford to lose any readers to the penal system, I’ll be using pseudonyms rather than the letter-writers’ real names. Don’t worry folks, I won’t rat you out to the coppers.

One of my favorite stories came from online reader “Francine,” who, as a 15-year-old girl swiped an unmentionable (I tried to get her to mention it, but she wouldn’t) undergarment while her friend and accomplice purchased an identical item. The next day, Francine returned the stolen frou-frou for cash, using her friend’s receipt.

Unfortunately, her accomplice’s mother discovered the purchased undergarment and demanded the girl take it back. (I don’t know what this undergarment was, but it must have been racy indeed to get all these moms in such an uproar.)

Having no receipt, the accomplice was forced to implicate Francine. A brief phone conversation between mothers landed Francine and her ill-gotten booty (by which I mean “cash” – just because we’re talking underwear here doesn’t mean this column is suddenly rated R) back at the lingerie store.

The store couldn’t accept the money, however, because the stolen item had been returned with a valid receipt. It would, they said, mess up their inventory.

Francine didn’t say whether her mother let her keep the loot, but my guess would be no.

Then there’s “Waldo,” who sent me a letter in which he confessed to stealing his father’s car in the middle of the night on his 15th birthday, crashing it into a tree, then walking home and climbing back into bed, bruised but otherwise unharmed.

Waldo’s old man died two years ago at the age of 87 having never heard his son’s confession. According to Waldo – now in his 60’s – his letter to me was the first time he’d mentioned the incident to anyone. The guilt had been haunting him for decades. If I were a priest I’d grant absolution.

Several readers confessed to swiping CDs – older readers swiped LPs or cassettes. Nowadays, music swiping is handled mostly online, I think, but apparently, the practice has been popular since Edison invented the phonograph.

Finally, one reader called me out on one of my own crimes – the comic book I confessed to stealing from Reagan’s Pharmacy on Michigan Street when I was in fourth grade.

Tommy (I’m using his real name, since unlike the rest of us, he’s not a crook) married one of Mr. Reagan’s granddaughters. Tommy pointed out that the revenue lost from that stolen comic book, along with regularly compounded interest, was money lost from his wife’s inheritance. The amount I now owe him will put his daughter through college, he says.

I’m not sure what collection methods Tommy plans to use, but I’ve started locking my doors at night.

It’s true folks, crime doesn’t pay.


Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

You know that bad thing that happened? It wasn’t me

I’m thinking of doing something terrible. I haven’t yet, but I am thinking about it.

I’m not certain what that terrible thing will be, but whatever it is, I want to make sure it’s a doozy. If I were younger and prettier, I might have a torrid love affair with a girl who works as a high-powered attorney by day and an exotic dancer by night. They can’t be too hard to find; I see ‘em on TV all the time.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor would no doubt disapprove, but thanks to a new online service—which we’ll get to in a minute—she would never have to know about it.

Same holds true if I decide to pilfer money from the company; they’d never be able to prove it was me doing the pilfering. Forget for a moment that I can barely figure out how to cash my own paycheck, let alone embezzle millions. The point is, if I could figure out how to do it, I’d get away with it.

Better still, I could track down my ninth grade gym teacher and beat the crap out of him. He’s got to be a little old man by now; how hard could it be? And heaven knows he’s got it coming. Paddle me for wearing wrinkled gym shorts, will ya? It’s payback time, Mr. Veet!

Again, I’d never get caught. Why? Because I’d have a perfect alibi, that’s why.

That alibi might be that I was in the Alps skiing with George Bush, or fishing in the North Atlantic off the bow of Donald Trump’s favorite yacht. Or maybe I was abducted by space aliens and forced to watch reruns of “Sanford and Son” while little grey men monitored my alpha waves.

It could be anything, thanks to Alibis-R-Us*, an online service that—for a price—will cover for you when you misbehave. And they will do it a lot better than your best friend Larry.

Unlike Larry, Alibis-R-Us won’t spill their guts the first time your wife gives them “the look.” If you say you were working late at the office, that’s what Alibis-R-Us will say. Not only that, they’ll call your home pretending to be a coworker and tell your wife you accidentally left some important papers in the Xerox room before you left the office—at 8:45 p.m.

They will dial you up early Friday morning and inform you (on speakerphone, if you know what you’re doing) that “the boss” needs you to make an emergency business trip to Cleveland this weekend.

They will then send e-mails—from Cleveland—to your wife, telling her how much you love her and how sad you are that you missed your mother-in-law’s visit this weekend. You, meanwhile, will be drinking margaritas on a beach in Barbados with a blonde flight attendant named Tiffany.

Alibis-R-Us also will provide you with “virtual employment,” fake tickets to concerts you never saw … they’ll even buy stuff for you that you’re embarrassed to purchase yourself. (Like the “American Idol” boxed set.)

I’m not advocating bad behavior. Really. But it’s hard to pass up this awesome online resource.

The problem for me is: I’m not evil, despite what you may hear from The Lovely Mrs. Taylor. I was raised Catholic, and when I do bad things, the guilt I feel takes all the fun out of it for me.

Maybe I could start small. I could jaywalk or drive around the block a couple times without buckling my seatbelt. If caught, I could get my Alibis-R-Us rep (posing as a psychiatrist) to say I’ve been diagnosed as delusional and am prone to erratic behavior.

I think could live with that. I mean, it wouldn’t be so far from the truth.

* Not the service’s real name, but it is a real service.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or to yell at him for putting bad ideas into the heads of otherwise good people, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Miss a week? More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com/advancenewspapers.