Bagboy Confessions

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What items can you shoplift, morally? Can we agree those necessary for survival are worthy of consideration? Can we agree luxuries like fresh shellfish do not meet the criteria? Has a starving child, the kind you see in some television advertisement narrated by a former movie star, ever begged for oysters Rockefeller, bacon wrapped scallops, or stone crabs with a zesty Dijon mustard sauce? Has anyone seen a man on his hands and knees after wandering the desert beg for lobster bisque or anything from the seafood counter at my grocery store? I have never seen anyone in such dire need, but 

I imagine they would probably ask for bread, water, maybe some fruit, a potato, maybe a whole chicken or something. 

So on that day, in my store, would this bagboy have overlooked the shoplifting incident if the suspect had smuggled out a package of spicy wings from the deli, a loaf of Cuban bread, or a banana in his pants? It is the moral question I hadn’t addressed leading to that day; that boiling summer day a man dropped one pound of fully cooked colossal tiger shrimp from his pants.  

The stranger wore black sweatpants cut below the knee with a drawstring elastic waist. He was in his mid-forties with thick black curls and a matching hairy patch peeking out the sweat-soaked neck of his red “Just Do It” shirt. Over the shirt, he wore a white long-sleeve rain jacket, useful for rainy Florida summer afternoons though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky as the salty breeze came from the east carrying the scent of the Atlantic, coconut oil, and fish carcasses from Mango Mama’s Raw Bar, the one known for the mechanical claw over the lobster tank.  

He caught my attention, and everyone else’s, walking from aisle four with what appeared to be a tree trunk in his pants. He tried to gracefully stroll bowlegged through the store past a pack of appalled gray-haired church ladies and one who just smiled. But no man, no matter what circus, could have had a bulge like that. Even its shape was beyond reason and imagination, resembling a foot long rolled up 4x4. What kind of man wants that? What kind of woman wants that? This was too much for my sixteen-year-old mind to unravel.  

I followed him through the store, past the red, white, and blue Fourth of July Potato Chip Extravaganza, beyond the Great Wall of Soda display, beyond the cooler of discounted footlongs. He made a sharp left into the lane of an empty register, acting cool, like we had nothing of interest.  

“Excuse me,” I said in front of everyone, standing in my neatly pressed, stained, blue apron. He froze, looking at me as the store hushed into a silence while “Maneater” played softly over the PA system. I lifted my chin, staring back unafraid, waiting. He slowly stepped back. Suddenly, the gravity of the situation hit the floor, slipping the grip of a drawstring waistband, dropping like a brick out his right pant leg with a thud.  

People laughed, some gasped, from a distance, not understanding what exactly happened. The now-to-be-called-“suspect” stood like a gunslinger that just dropped his six-shooter between his legs. I wondered if he actually had a gun. I then wondered why I thought of him now as a “suspect” rather than a perpetrator, a thief, or a criminal despite seeing the crime with my own two eyes causing me to ponder the toll this politically correct world was having on my sanity and ability to grasp the reality of the situation presented before me. The shrimp did fall from his pants and, unless someone else placed them there without his knowledge, it was fairly safe to declare him a guilty shrimp smuggler.   

I stood firm, my legs shoulder width apart, waiting to see his next move. I glanced down to the tightly packed package of shrimp. I wondered if he had anything else shoved in his pants, perhaps an uncomfortably wedged bottle of cocktail sauce, a huge Meyer lemon, or a container of breadcrumbs, but nothing else plummeted to earth that moment.  

My manager, a wide Marine sporting the flattest of flattops, stepped out from the front office. The bandit looked as if saying, “Touché, today you foiled my plot, but I shall return for those tasty colossal tiger shrimp,” or so I imagined from that glance mortal enemies exchange.  

Without the evil laugh, he sprinted out the main door, down the covered walkway. I felt the eyes of all the onlookers, waiting to see what I would do. I was just as curious. My original plan was to do nothing and watch him run. But I then watched him come to a relaxed walk into the sunset and it bothered me. It was like he felt completely safe, beyond reproach, unafraid of me, the supermarket, the cops, those of us who pay for our food, those who don’t get to indulge in $12.99 a pound fully cooked colossal tiger shrimp. This man was not going to casually walk away from his crime. Not on my watch.  

As I ran, I wondered why the shrimp were $12.99 a pound. Were they different than the ones I would get for half that price at Chubby’s Bait and Tackle on the pier? Was he going to use these for bait? That would be a waste unless he knew something the rest of us didn’t, that the fish in these here waters preferred fully cooked colossal tiger shrimp over the raw, less-colossal, non-tiger, shrimp. Perhaps it was why I wasn’t having much luck at the pier.  

I wondered if I should just each the shrimp from Chubby’s. At that price, I could have splurged for that ultimate shrimp extravaganza feast I never knew I could afford. And why didn’t he just steal the shrimp from Chubby? Everyone knows you’d be a mile away before he got his fat ass off his high chair. So did this man steal from us to spite my grocery store? To spite me?  

“Hey!” I shouted to let him know I was still doing this. He exchanged a sour face of disbelief before fleeing the parking lot. Every fifty yards, he looked back to see me still in pursuit. Each time, I grew more proud of my commitment to the chase for justice. He dashed across the busy boulevard, stopping at the median. His white jacket flapped like a cape in the hot tar-filled breeze as the traffic sped by. He watched me wait for my turn to cross.  

He started again from the median, not seeing the car speeding toward him. The screech was deafening, stopping all hearts for blocks, barely missing him as nothing additional dropped from his shorts… or mine. Shaken, he patted himself, briefly rejoicing to be alive. Time stood still on that boulevard as “In the Air Tonight” blared from a car stereo waiting at the light. His smile and disregard for my continued presence rekindled the flame of my commitment. I was also a member of the high school track team and had plenty of gas in the tank.  

“Hey,” I shouted to remind him, to let him know I was ready to reengage in this race we started. “Really?” I heard him say as he took off again with his flip-flops in hand. I continued the chase, but not before doing a slide across the hood of a papaya Pontiac for dramatic effect. As I gained on him, he threw his flip-flops at me in a graceful superhero spin while telling me to do something to myself. “Ha ha, not today!” I said in my best action hero voice for the confused onlookers before they shrugged their shoulders and continued walking.  

Thirty seconds later, I found myself catching up to him… again. It was becoming apparent this tiger-shrimp-stealing super villain was not that super. It was annoying how easily I was catching up to him… at the Circle K, Ronnie’s Barbershop, St. Ambrose Church, Tito’s Pizza, DJ’s Donuts, at the next boulevard, at the liquor store. Each time I slowed to a light jog to keep a distance, realizing with each step my lack of desire to actually catch him. I started this in a flash of anger toward his audacity, perhaps to show off, and maybe to scare him from ever coming back.  

What was I to do if and when I did catch him? Was I to point at him in a superhero pose, hands on hips, and tell him to never do that again, that stealing shrimp doesn’t pay? Was I to tackle him to the ground and hold him down until the cops arrived? Was I to beat the pulp out of him in the middle of the boulevard, in front of my Church, and hogtie him with my Smiley’s Supermarket apron as onlookers watched from their cars?  

Did I care? Yes. Did it bother me? Yes. Did I want to be a hero? Yes. Did he deserve an ass beating? I didn’t think so at the time. More importantly, I didn’t see myself as the guy to do it. My thrill was just for the chase, nothing else. I felt sad for him, hunched over, trying to catch his breath. I mimicked him to make him feel better, as an excuse for not catching him.  

When my manager caught up with me in his just-waxed black Datsun, he asked me where the guy was. I pointed at the shrimp villain in the distance by a brick wall to a housing complex. “Let’s get him,” my manager said. “He’s too fast,” I said. The exhausted, barefoot, defeated man awkwardly scaled the wall and plopped over, onto the other side like a two hundred-pound package of fully cooked, previously frozen, colossal tiger shrimp.  

My manager said it was just as well. He was proud of what I had done but knew it could have cost us our jobs. Mr. Davis, the head of the store, was going to give me a lecture about the liabilities of my stunt and perhaps suspend me for a day. But in the car, my manager went on and on about how awesome it was watching me chase him out the store and how he would have pummeled the guy if he had caught him. I just nodded my head, closed my eyes, and leaned back in the seat as he drove me the long mile back to the store. One mile. It was one mile and the crossing of the town’s busiest intersection that made me learn something new.  

I was sixteen and too young to know for sure. I started to wonder if I was perhaps a passivite, a passicist, a paracist, a passavista, a pacificist, or whatever the term was for someone who didn’t want to pummel some poor guy, or anyone for that matter over a pound of stolen crustaceans. This ideology was not fully developed or understood so I kept my mouth shut. I just knew my lust to harm another man in any way was not there when it was supposed to be.  

I was unsure, perhaps ashamed or afraid, to tell anyone and risk being less of a man, not having that primal desire to damage someone. I wasn’t afraid to die at sixteen, more than people knew, but I was sure I never wanted to take a life. Joining the military years later was my chance to help people. I accepted that I could take a life if it meant saving someone’s life next to me. But secretly, when I did pray, I prayed I would never have to and to this day, I have been blessed. 

I have no idea if anyone ever ate the shrimp that fell out of the guy’s pants, if they were unwrapped from the paper packaging, released from the plastic bag, thrown back and mixed into the sea of thawed shrimp in the case, and eventually placed on some family’s proud dining room table for enthusiastic consumption. Could you still sell them knowing they were just in someone’s pants? Were they still good? It was Florida in July, where the humidity makes even the water sweat. His pants were loose, so he either kept them suspended by what I assumed was a waistband or he had them stuffed in his underwear before they slipped through. I think it was the former. 

It was disturbing the more I thought about it. To this day, I eat shrimp with a little more soul-searching introspection and wandering thought than the average person. Forgive me and please pass the cocktail sauce.