The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

If you ever sat down and made a list of all the things you'd like to teach your children across a lifetime, it would probably resemble the length of the Declaration of Independence.

We all know the basics: "Wear a hat in the winter." "Don't put your hand near the stove." "Brush your teeth." "Look both ways when crossing the street." And who could forget, "Don't take rides with strangers."

These are the easy ones. Minor leagues, really. They were taught to us at an early age when we were at our most impressionable. And through the natural course of daily living, we're fortunate enough to get plenty of practice as parents. Somehow, these incidents seem to present themselves so often that after awhile, our kids can recite the mantras before they even leave our mouths.

After all the standard precautions are out of the way, we move onto a higher level of basic etiquette. "Say you're sorry." "Always say thank you." "When you ask for something, say please." Of course, these are usually less of a slam dunk and could easily go by the wayside. However, at the end of the day, you can sleep at night with the knowledge that you tried to train your kids for the important things in life; even as basic as they are.

We teach the differences between right and wrong and even explain the disparity between good and bad people, as sometimes referred to as "Mensches vs Schmucks". Unfortunately, it's the subcategories that often get forgotten. For me, the eye opener this week happened at Claire's, a costume jewelry store for young girls.

It wasn't the trigger happy ear piercer, or the obnoxious sales clerk. It was someone else that my kids had never experienced before.

THE SHOPLIFTER

My wife first noticed it. A teenager had tucked a pair of earrings in her pocket, and was immediately caught by a very observant sales clerk. She cornered the shoplifter, and asked the cashier to call the police. Our kids were pulled aside from the "crime scene" as they watched with utter amazement that someone would actually try to take something without paying for it.

It was at that moment that I realized that as parents, we never really set aside time to explain the existence of dishonest people in the world. Our kids may have witnessed cheating on a test, or maybe school pranks that end quickly and without permanent harm. However, we never really expose them to....real thieves.

Then the questions begin. "Why did she do that? "What are the police going to do?" "Will she go to jail?" "Could she just say she was sorry?"

The police did eventually arrive, and the kids didn't feel like waiting around to see what the outcome would be. In fact, they didn't even want to do anything else in town. They simply wanted to go home, presumably before they ran into any other shoplifters with inflated pockets.

I told this story to a friend of mine just yesterday, and he mentioned that while inside the mall last week, someone broke the back window of his sport utility to get his mitts on his daugther's iTouch. His kids returned to the car to not only find a missing iTouch, but a hole where the window should be and glass all over their car seats. My friend called the police and his kids finished witnessing their first exposure to theft. He too had to explain his way out of this one while walking on egg shells. He busted out the "some people are poor" card. Then followed up with "maybe his parents didn't teach him the right things to do." It didn't really matter. His kids are still talking about it.

Maybe there isn't a way to ever prepare your kids for people who steal. The unfortunate thing is, it will be all around them for the rest of their lives. It's why the police always have work, and why homes have alarm systems. It keeps security guards in business, and doesn't hurt doormen either. Thievery is like oxygen to Wall Street and a blood transfusion to a used car dealer.

Movies and television can't help us with this kind of education. Somehow "Swiper" from Dora just doesn't have the same impact as real life, especially because he never gets away with it. I guess there may never be a specific way to prepare our kids for the Billy the Kids that reside in our towns, or for that matter in every town. Nobody wants to get robbed. Nobody wants to see a robbery in progress.

So we shelter our kids from the Fagans of the world the best we can. And when they do finally come face to face with someone mean who takes something that doesn't belong to them, we can only hope.

We hope that it's a 9-year old, with a Yankees cap, stealing his first pack of baseball cards.