Well… Nobody tell my parents but,
Ignoring stealing office supplies from work, I’ve shoplifted and taken five-finger discounts at swap meets. I’ve also stolen merchandise from a couple of jobs. Very petty stuff.
Other than regular and willful curfew violations, no, never.
Yes.
I think the most illegal thing I ever did when I was young was detonating M80s in my backyard.
Come to think of it, I don’t even know for sure it was illegal.
I stole an orange traffic cone from a six flags.
Would you count grafitti as destruction of property? There seem to be millions of kids running around with spray paint. I’d guess that it is done at least as much against public property than private, if that matters. How many bridges do you pass by in a big city that DON’T have graffiti?
As a child, I commited several heinous crimes: I removed the “DO NOT REMOVE” tags from my grandmothers seat pads!
No pre-adolescent shoplifting, but certainly some adolescent shoplifting from corner stores and grocery stores at 13 and 14. Getting busted stealing one of those Hostess apple pies and getting a ride home with a cop sure put an end to that nonsense. The look on my moms (RIP) face when she opened the door and saw me in handcuffs is something I’ll never forget.
Lots of blowing stuff up with fireworks, which may not seem so bad but they are certainly illegal in Milwaukee.
The usual adolescent skipping school and very minor weed and alcohol use. Mostly I was a good kid, though.
I just typed out a list, and then erased it. Instead, I’m just going to say “yes.”
Mine’s the dumbest!
My brother, stepbrother, stepsister, and I stole a golf cart. At the time, we ranged in age from twelve to fourteen, and we were wandering around our trailer park in search of something to do when we spotted the golf cart in the park manager’s driveway with the keys in the ignition.
We took it and went joyriding all over the park, driving through people’s yards and waving to people. (Well, I told you we were dumb). After what seems like a very long time, we started wondering what we were going to do about all the trouble we were currently in. We parked behind a dumpster and commenced to arguing. During the argument, my stepsister reached over and turned the ignition key. One of the boys was sitting in the drivers’ seat with his foot on the pedal, and the cart lurched forward, hitting a metal bar that was sticking out of the dumpster and breaking the windshield. Right about then, we saw the park manager’s car approaching. We panicked and tried to outdrive him in the cart (top speed about 15mph). When he caught up to us, we jumped out and ran.
By the time we got home, our parents knew all about it (as did probably everyone in a five mile radius), so there was no sense lying about it. We lied our asses off, but it availed us nothing.
Our parents paid the park manager for the damage, and he kindly decided not to pursue the matter further. Stepbrother and stepsister were sent back to their distant home, avoiding all other punishment, and my brother and I stayed in trouble for a long, long time.
My crimes mostly involved soft drug use. These days, I’m as law abiding as Joe Friday, but even when I was younger, my criminal behavior was always victimless. I certainly never vandalized or stole from other people. the one time I ever tried to shoplift something (I tried to steal a tape from a record store), I got caught and arrested. Other than smoking pot, that was the beginning and end of my criminal career.
Nope. I’m something of a goody-two-shoes.
A couple weeks ago I emptied my cart into the car at Wal-Mart. Wedged between the side of the cart and the bottom was a $2 package of something minor - nuts and bolts I think, that I intended to buy.
Anyway, I considered tossing it in the back and driving off but my sense of guilt would’ve haunted me on that. I went back in, checked the $2 item, and went home.
I’ve also gone back into the grocery store to pay for a doughnut eaten by one of my children while shopping.
When I was about 12 on halloween some of my friends and I put mustard on the front window of a house of a girl we decided we didn’t like. I’m not sure if that counts, as it washed right off during the next rain, but we felt like totally baddies when we did it.
What does post-adolescent petty shoplifting count as? You can put me down for that.
I’ve broken plenty of laws, but as far as “theft-type” laws go, just very petty shoplifting ($15.00 or less, I’d guess). I once ripped a mirror off the dorm bathroom wall in a drunken stupor. No other property destruction, no B & E. No physical assault of any kind.
Joe
ETA : I guess some rest-room wall vandalism property damage. No spray paint or anything. If I had a pen, I might draw a cock on the wall or something.
No theft or post-puberty shoplifting. Some toilet papering, including one run-in with the cops, who merely told us to leave as we hadn’t started yet.
Two incidents of car vandalism in high school: 1) After PE, some jock threw me in the shower when I was fully clothed. My revenge consisted of sticking a nail under his tire so when he backed out, he got a flat.
2) Another guy I had beef with drove a ragtop. One night I stood on his hood and pissed on the cloth top, aiming for the dips between the ribs so the urine would pool up and have time to make the car smelly.
I didn’t even steal gum. Once when I was about 7 I stole the equivalent of a piece of lego from a school set and sweated about it for a week. I’m not cut out for a life of crime.
No, nothing serious. The most I ever did was throw stuff at other stuff (corn at cars, corn at houses, eggs at houses, cheese at houses, cars at houses, now-and-laters at houses and cars, tomatoes at hicks) and steal those real estate and political signs (never street signs) and put them in other yards. I would never have done anything that I would consider “real” destruction of property, like throwing rocks or smashing anyone’s private property. Oh, once I did steal a pumpkin and smash it in the street. But come on, it was freakin Febuary, toss the damn thing out already!
Your name should be Justin Edible!
I’ve committed various acts of vandalism (and a series of highly weird petty thefts that served no purpose but to annoy) that were usually subversive, bizarre or prankish in some way. And trespassing. Not lately though; ten years ago or more, before I turned 18.