David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Sept. 30, 2003

I wonder what "they" say about stolen underwear

They say no good deed ever goes unpunished. They may be correct. They are pretty smart. They are wise, and they have a keen awareness of the situation at hand. Whoever they are, they know what they are talking about.

They should also say that in addition to no good deed ever going unpunished, no stolen undies are ever paid for. I admit that it's a rather specific pearl of wisdom, but it fits perfectly in my case.

The four Spateses (what a messy word) were shopping for our needed wares at one of those behemoth stores. You know, the kind of a store in which if you forget to grab light bulbs while you were in the light bulbs section, the return journey is so long and fraught with peril that you need a Sherpa. It's the kind of a store where a car battery and buttery croissants share the same buggy -- the kind of a store so large and overdone that it could serve as a distribution point for an entire Third World country.

This is where we were exercising our purchasing power, and this is where we stole the underwear. We didn't intend to steal the underwear. It was an accident. It just happened, your honor. As anyone who has ever had children knows, sometimes a child just needs to hold something to be happy. On this day, my daughter needed to hold her soon-to-be-new Dora the Explorer undies, and so the crime began.

As there usually is, there was a rush to exit the store. Perhaps the crisis du jour was a dirty diaper, or maybe it was a hungry child, or maybe it was the race to get the baby home before he fell asleep in transit, thereby wasting a perfectly good nap in the car when he could be sleeping at home and allowing his parents a few moments' rest. I don't know why we were in such haste, but apparently it was enough for us not to notice that Anna was holding her Dora undies the entire time and never gave them to the cashier. It was only after we returned home that we realized our daughter had sticky fingers -- stickier than normal, I should say.

No big deal, I thought. We're sorry that it happened, but the store people will understand. We'll call them, apologize and pay for the undies over the phone with a credit card, and that will be that. It's only a $3.49 pack of toddler undies, after all. No one was going to jail for that. Well, I hoped not. On the other hand, maybe a night in the tank would do Anna for the ill-gotten booty. My wife explains that we have two small children and that we won't be able to return immediately, but that we'll be in "soon" to shell out our $3.49 plus tax. Very well.

Actually, not so very well. The preceding exchange took place six or seven weeks ago. We're on the lamb. We're a wanted foursome, dead or alive. We haven't paid yet.

It's not that we intended to let the Dora underwear issue go on so long, it's just that it's not at the top of our list from day to day.

Many's the evening that my wife and I have mentioned the unlawful undies to each other, along with plans to make a special effort to stop by the store to pay for them, but then tomorrow comes and life gets in the way. You know what they say about the best-laid plans. Boy, they are smart, aren't they?

Now it's been so long since the heist occurred that we're feeling more than a little sheepish about returning to the scene of the crime. It feels as though we've chalked it up to the cosmic balance at this point. Accidents happen, and sometimes those accidents benefit you and sometimes they benefit the store. There have been plenty of times that I've paid for an item at the check-out line but the item is nowhere to be found when I get home. At the end of your life, I think the losses and gains work themselves out to a zero net-gain. Call it the Yin and Yang of retail.

Besides, I'm a little irked at the guy on the phone who was such a snot to my wife. If we intended to steal the undies, we wouldn't have called. It's not our fault they can't conduct a basic credit card transaction over the phone. It was an honest mistake, for cryin' out loud. It's hard to get too riled up, though. We're the ones who swiped the underwear.

You know what they say, the family that pilfers together stays together. Well, maybe they don't say that, but they should.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.