Old, Hard Wired Habits

It's interesting as you get older you begin to learn that not everything your parents taught you was the best. As you pass 25 (in my opinion, since I'm 27 and beginning to get mind f*cks about what I thought was normal behavior), you begin to look hard and without bias at rules or ways of being that you simply would not even begin to know how to question previously. Things you took to be as facts begin to crinkle around the edges and you finally pull them off to discover they were covering up something else.

Now, I'm not going to say that it was wrong of them or that it's wrong of every parent to do this. No one is perfect, we are all human and nothing is black and white in this world, especially in raising children. What works in raising one child may not work with the other and we're all children of our environment yadda yadda, all that stuff.

Today while checking out at the grocery store, there was a women ahead of us that left $50 in the change tray of the self-checkout lane. Without even thinking about the fact that it was from a woman that probably didn't know how to work the machine properly and more importantly looked as if she would really miss that $50, I took it. I took it because we really needed the money, I'm out of work and Clive has other legal responsibilities he's taking care of that are currently, but temporarily, cutting into our finances.

Clive said "no, give that to the cashier to credit to that woman's account." We did, and the cashier said they could easily put it on the woman's store loyalty card and then we left. However, I was upset, actually upset. Not at my dishonesty (which is what I'm now mad at), but because Clive gave back the money! Wow...

We talked afterwards and I admitted that that's how I grew up, if the opportunity arises and it won't directly hurt anyone that you care about (very important fact, hence all of you people reading this are safe), stealing is a way to show your love. The opportunity came up, someone left $50 in the tray, so I took it because that's more food for us or maybe something to put away for later. The logic being "that woman is stupid enough to let $50 go away from her, so that is a clean opportunity for me, she's not family or a friend of mine or someone I care about, so since this is here, it is now mine and ours."

I'm glad this happened though, this unfortunately was a very hard wired fact that only someone I care about on much deeper levels than even my family and someone who's been much more poor than I could ever dream could break in me.

Hi. My name is ... and I'm a recovering Robin Hood.