Twinkies & My Life of Crime

Until one particular day when I was seven years old, Mom always let me help with the grocery shopping.

I was five or six when I learned not to be one of those obnoxious kids, you know them, the ones who pester their mom with things they want. Or the ones who don't know how irritating they are when they cry, yell, scream, kick or just throw a 'who gives a damn' tantrum. I tried that stuff, but Mom put a quick end to it. She left the cart where it was, took me home and put me in a time out. It wasn't long before I learned there were better ways.

The first was to be quiet and do what she wanted (Brandon, don’t ride on the cart. Brandon, please get that jar of apple sauce on the bottom shelf). That usually earned me the opportunity to choose such things as the cereal, cookies or snacks I liked. If I begged for anything before she asked if I wanted it, though, I probably wasn’t going to get it.

The second was to use my own form of subliminal advertising. This is what I did. We would be in a particular aisle, Frozen Foods for instance. I'd be pushing the cart along, but even if Mom would stop to look at the fried chicken, I would continue on and stop it in front of the frozen waffles or the ice cream and wait there, hoping she'd notice and decide we needed whatever the cart was parked in front of. I don't really know if it worked, but I liked to think it did. 

Everything was fine until one particular day when I did one little sneaky thing. In fact, it was a wicked thing, although it didn’t seem especially wicked when I did it, even though I did know it was wrong.

There are many things children do when they're seven that seem like good ideas at the time… In fact, there are many things any of us, no matter how old, are liable to do if it seems like a good idea at the time. All too often we don’t think it all the way through so that we avoid feeling guilty forever. That kind of thought process is rarely an option when the good idea at the time is in the mind of a seven-year old. Most kids have those kinds of ideas and when we look back on them from the perspective of adulthood we often see that maybe we haven’t learned much of anything from them.

For instance one of my friends didn’t think it was such a bad idea to take a look under the teacher’s dress. It turned out to be a very, very, very bad idea, though. Nonetheless, if given the chance to do the same thing today (with a different teacher, of course), I think my friend might still want to do it, but it wouldn’t just be to look at her underwear (which he had a great time whispering to everyone the next morning, “Blue. They were blue”).

This is what happened to me in the grocery store. This was one of those times Mom didn't seem to be paying any attention to me. I stopped in front of the Sugar Smacks, but mom picked out cheerios and corn flakes. I stopped in front of the chocolate covered marshmallow cookies, but mom grabbed a package of windmill cookies, which were not even close to being one of my favorites. I wish I’d paid attention to where she dropped them in the basked because it might have been worth knowing a few minutes later. We went down the canned foods aisle, then up the coffee aisle. For me this was probably the most boring aisle of all, but at the end of the aisle was a display of Cupcakes and Twinkies, so I stopped the cart there while mom was looking at boxes of tea.

I knew there wasn't much chance Mom would get us any Twinkies, some cupcakes, maybe. The only time I ever got Twinkies was when I traded for them at school. Mom picked out a couple boxes of tea, dropped them in the cart and continued on without even looking at the display. We headed down the paper products aisle. Since there was nothing I was interested in there, I stopped a few feet away from where Mom was looking at paper towels. Another woman came along from the other direction and stopped right along side me. I glanced at here cart and even though it was almost full, I saw only one thing, a box of Twinkies right on top at the front of her cart.

That’s when the wicked, sneaky idea hit me. We could trade.

I grabbed the Twinkies from her basket and dropped them in ours. Frantically (maybe 1.35 seconds) I looked for the almond cookies. Not seeing them I grabbed the first thing I could reach, a box of tea, which I put in the other basket where the Twinkies had been.

Just as I completed the maneuver the other woman put a package of knapkins in her cart. At the same time Mom set a package of paper towels in our basket. The moment I did it, I wished I hadn't. I was positive I was going to get caught. It was too late now, though. I crossed all my fingers and tried to cross my toes. I prayed, maybe like I'd never prayed before. I no longer wanted the Twinkies as much as I didn't want to get caught. If only I could find a way to get those Twinkies out of the basket before she noticed they were there.

It didn't happen though. All too soon we had reached the greatest hazard of all: check out. Holding my breath I watched as Mom chatted with the cashier. They were both so busy catching up with the latest gossip that the box of Twinkies slid right under Mom's nose right into the hands of the Bagger.

A few minutes later we were on our way home. I had all I could do to keep from giggling and almost got caught there in the car. This was like a Mission Impossible, though. My next thought was how would I get them out of the bag. I didn't even know which bag they were in!

On the one hand I couldn’t wait to eat one of those Twinkies on the other the thought terrified me. I kept saying to myself, "I shouldn't have done it. I'm in big trouble. I shouldn't have done it."

“Brandon, honey, is something bothering you?” Mom asked.

I had to think fast. This was the worst part. I didn’t want to put a lie on top of my growing list of crimes.

“Well,” I said. I knew I should confess. I knew I better. "Back in the grocery store..."

“Gosh darn,” she said before I could finish, “Almost forgot to stop at the drug store.”

I waited in the car while she ran inside. All the groceries were on the back seat. I unhooked the seatbelt, leaned over, stretched as far as I could and started rummaging through the bags. Six bags. Not in the first. Not in the second. Not in the third. I wasn't going to find them. I would have to confess. Just as I saw her coming out of the store I found the Twinkies, in the fourth bag, under the bread. There wasn't much I could do. I pulled them out, dropped them on the floor and pulled the foor mat over them.

Now, I thought I might get away with this, maybe.

Everything went smoothly from that point on. We got the groceries out of the car. She didn't notice the bump in the floor mat. We put all the groceries away. While she was making herself a cup of tea I casually took her keys, went out the back door and around to the car. I unlocked it, got the Twinkies, hid the box in the garage, went back into the house and casually put her keys back where she always left them.

"Brandon," she called when she heard me in the kitchen. "Come in here, please." She was in the family room sipping her tea. That's when I learned about receipts. I always saw her getting them after she handed over her money, but I never thought anything about them.

"Did we get a box of Twinkies?"

Way back when I traded the tea for the Twinkies I thought I had this all worked out. Now I could see she wasn't going to fall for it.

"Where are they?"

"I traded a box of tea for them." That turned out to be my big mistake. The tea I traded was the one she wanted to make. It turned out to be a pretty bad trade. No TV or snacks for two weeks. The worst part, though, was that it was the last time I got to go to the grocery store with her until I was in High School.

What about the Twinkies? Dad ate them all. All! I didn’t get a single one.