You remember Nanette, don’t ya?

Well, once upon a time in the not so distant past, Nanette took up shoplifting. Of course, being Nanette is like starring in your own personal Fox sitcom. And being a friend of Nanette, I have a front row seat.

It all started when Nanette decided that life had given her a raw deal and–utilizing her well-honed pretzel logic–came to the conclusion that life owed her. And one way she could collect on this debt would be to take things that were not hers. Lots of things. So her brief life of crime began.

She would show up at my place with her purse full of booty from her latest hit–shampoo, perfume, toothbrushes, incense, lipstick, hand lotion, candles, fingernail polish–and attempt to sell me on the cheap. Despite the fact that I was a struggling student and the bargain prices were very tempting, I always refused her offers. I just couldn’t rationalize reinforcing the thievery that I knew would eventually get her into trouble.

In the beginning, while she varied her targets (grocery stores, Targets, KMarts) Nanette pretty much kept to the same time (5-7 p.m.-ish) and MO (large purse, quick hand, innocent demeanor). These minimal precautions kept her safe…for a while.

Weltering in the luxury provided by her misbegotten gains and heady with the rush of “getting away with it,” Nanette turned a deaf ear to my gentle urgings to abandon her life of crime, that something wicked this way cometh. I was Cassandra speaking some nonsense about looking a gift horse in the mouth, and Nanette wasn’t buying it.

In fact, Nanette wasn’t buying anything. Bolstered by her successful and profitable run as a petty thief, she’d graduated from purse to diaper bag to accommodate the ever-expanding boodle she was now lugging home on a nightly basis. Yup! Definitely something wicked this way cometh.

Maybe she would have gotten away with her naughtiness despite the diaper bag—at least for a little while longer—if she hadn’t gotten comfortable with one particular establishment and started plundering it on a more than occasional basis. But she did.

So one Friday night, after about of month of zipping up and down the aisles of this store like the Eveready Bunny-gone-bad and stuffing everything that would fit into her diaper bag, Nanette had been at it again and was about to make her get away. Not a difficult thing; she’d done it dozens of times by then. Switching into an “I’m not guilty” saunter, she ambled toward the door, smiling at the cashiers as she passed them. They smiled back. But what Nanette didn’t notice was that they were looking over her head rather than at her when they smiled.

Just as the automatic door was opening in front of her, Nanette felt a large hand gripping her arm and heard the voice of doom from behind: “Miss, could you please show me what you have in your diaper bag before you leave our store?” Nanette turned and looked up into the not-so-happy visage of the Store Manager.

What did she do?

What else? She started peeing her pants. Yes she did, ladies and gentlemen! Nanette started peeing her pants right there in the store. It was seeping out from under her cut-offs (pinched Levis), running down her tan thighs (purloined Hawaiian Tropic) and dripping onto her sandaled feet (filched Tommy Hilfiger) to puddle on the floor (nailed down) all around her as the manager and nearby cashiers looked on.

Which (and this could only happen in Nanette’s world) turned out to be a good thing.

Because–probably due to her obvious mortification and the fact that she was simultaneously sobbing uncontrollably–Nanette got a break from that manager. He did not call the police and report her as a shoplifter. What he did do is ban her from his store for life.

Lucky girl, dontcha think?

And believe it or not, she is a good girl. I swear!

And she doesn’t have a police record. Well, at least not yet. I’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Funny Side Up, Rhetorically Yours. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.