When I was 14 years old, I used to baby-sit to make some extra cash. A lot of families in my neighborhood had me on their list and they’d call me once in a while to see if I was available to basically hang out and watch TV with their kids while they were out partying somewhere. I didn’t do infants or any other high-maintenance babysitting. I was more of a little kid sitter and mostly a TV watcher/sitter. I would’ve been more of a stoned TV watcher/sitter, but quite frankly it wasn’t easy finding pot where I grew up. Anyway, I was a great baby sitter.
At this time in my life I was also a kleptomaniac, which meant I couldn’t control myself and had to steal. It was a weird condition because mostly I didn’t do it to really get anything; it was more like an addiction to adrenalin. I would say I was more of an adrenalin addict than a kleptomaniac, and that stealing was just a subset of the adrenalin activities that I was involved with from time to time.
It wasn’t like I was ALWAYS stealing, but I did it enough to qualify as having an actual condition. I suppose if I had tried telling a judge that I wasn’t a criminal and that I merely had an infatuation with the chemical buzz from stealing he probably would’ve told me to shut up and sent me to jail anyways. It’s funny how we rationalize things and how our mind plays tricks on ourselves.

Honestly, sometimes it was about the stuff. I used to shop lift with some of my derelict friends and we would steal candy and comic books — the usual suspects. A lot of it was about showing off to my loser friends and I have to admit there was a payoff: the rush of stealing is like doing a drug, and of course you get the free candy and what not.
Me and my loser friend Brian Hart snuck into the local theater late one night and stole about five cases of candy. One huge score. The weird thing was, it was pitch black in there and you couldn’t even see your hands in front of you. But somehow we managed to find the candy and get it.

Then, while we were carrying the goods, we heard a noise. Someone else was there. It must’ve been the manager guy who worked there. He didn’t have a flashlight, but he was looking for us. I remember distinctly standing in the pitch black of the little area right in front of where you walk into the theater, the area where there are double doors on both sides so as to keep the noise down. Anyway, I’m standing there, scared out of my mind, holding five cases of candy and the guy walks right in front of me, but he can’t see me. I had to hold my breath and not make a peep. It was creepy. He was literally two feet away, looking straight at me, but since it was so pitch black I could see him but he couldn’t see me. I was invisible. After about two seconds, he turned away and left the premises. That was a close call!

One time, I was babysitting at the Jefferson’s, a family up the street I’d known for many years and had babysat for a couple years already. I was snooping around upstairs in Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson’s room, looking through her jewelry and found what looked like a fake diamond ring. It didn’t look all that great and it was just lying around with a bunch of other fake looking jewelry. I just figured it wasn’t worth all that much because it was just sittin’ there and wasn’t all locked up in a safe or in some fancy jewelry box or anything.

It was just sittin’ there, like the ring from The Lord Of The Rings, beckoning me, calling to me, “Cliff, go ahead, take me. You know you want to. No one will know. Maybe you could give me to a pretty girl. Maybe I’m real and you can make a lot of easy money off me. Just go for it, man!”
So, I picked it up and took a closer look. I didn’t know anything about diamonds or jewelry and still don’t, but at the time I knew enough to try and see if it would scratch glass.
I’d heard somewhere that a real diamond was harder than glass and could scratch it. So I tried the dummy’s diamond test on the corner of Mrs. Jefferson’s mirror and it made a little scratch. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if it really is a diamond. I just put it in my pocket and forgot about it.
For a while that is…

About two weeks later, my mother came up to me and said, “Hey, Cliff, where’d you get this ring? I found it in your pants pocket when I was doing the laundry.”
I just said, “Oh, I don’t know, I think I found it on the ground. It’s probably fake.”
I really had forgotten about taking it and I didn’t even try to hide it. I was just a dumb teenager, not really paying attention to certain details, like hiding a diamond that I had stolen. My mother was smarter than the average bear (she used to use goofy little anecdotes like that when I was a kid) and probably had spent some time studying that stupid little ring. She said, “No, I think it’s a real diamond. We should take it to a jeweler and get it appraised.”
I said, “Cool, let’s go see if its worth anything.” I wasn’t remorseful or worried that I would get in any trouble, whatsoever.
At that time, I was a budding new musician and getting pretty good on the piano. I wanted to buy a Fender Rhodes electric piano and start a rock ‘n’ roll band but I didn’t have enough cash. My step dad said he’d pay for half if I came up with the rest.
Maybe this ring would be worth something like maybe 10,000 dollars, or a million dollars, and then I could buy all kinds of stuff! My mind raced with excitement and anticipation. But I played it cool and pretended to be barely interested.
So, me and my mom went uptown to some jewelry place and the main guy wasn’t there but some apprentice-type looking young guy took a look at the diamond and said, “Nope, it’s a fake all right. It’s a nice one though, probably worth $100 at the most.”
My heart sank and I bummed a little bit. My mother said, “Are you sure?” and he said, “Yes ma’am, positive.” We walked out of that place and figured it was just as well and that it was no big deal. But as we left, my mother still had a creepy feeling about this ring, that maybe it was real, and maybe that apprentice jewelry bonehead didn’t know what he was doing. My mother was no rocket scientist, but she was a little smarter than the average bear. She wanted a second opinion.
We went back to the jewelry store the next day to check again, but this time with the older guy with the big magnifying glass in one eye and the little-hat-and-jewelry-guy outfit. He at least looked the part. Maybe he could tell us if that stupid ring was real or not, so we could get on with our lives. I never once thought about getting caught, or how it must have felt to be Mrs. Jefferson and have her ring stolen. I just didn’t know any better at the time. I was like a lot of people who didn’t know any better — back then.
The guy took a quick look and nonchalantly said, “Oh, why, yes, that’s a real diamond all right. Probably worth three or four thousand dollars, easy.” My mother and I looked at each other like, yeah, now we’re getting somewhere. I felt all greedy and evil for a little while and just soaked it all up. I didn’t feel bad at all for stealing that ring because I’d conned myself into thinking that it wasn’t real and was stupid enough to leave it in my pants pocket for my mom to find. I had tricked myself into thinking it was just dumb luck.
It just made sense to say that I found it on the ground. I even made up a little story about how I was pushing our lawnmower up the street to slave and suffer by cutting someone’s grass because I was such a hard-working, good little boy.
Not. I was nothing more than a small-time, petty thief, and that’s the truth. I feel kind of bad about it now, but back then, for some weird reason, I felt ZERO remorse.

About a year earlier, my first ten-speed bike had been stolen from school. My biological father had given me that bike and it meant more to me than anything in the world. Some rat bastard at school just took it, on the first day of school no less, and ruined my entire reality. It wasn’t just a little thing. It was a catastrophic event in my mind and a turning point in my concept of the universe.
What little good was left in my heart was crushed out of existence. I had enough evidence that the world was a bad place, that authority figures couldn’t be trusted, that the government was corrupt, that my parents weren’t qualified to raise me, and that the history books in school were just made up on the spot half the time.
I wasn’t buying any more of what the world was selling. I decided I was at war with the world and would take no prisoners. I had been dealt a lousy hand of cards in the game of life and I was not going to go down with the ship. I’d also determined that the world owed me big time for all the times I’d been victimized, ripped off, cheated and lied to.
So, that’s why I convinced myself I had no remorse for stealing Mrs. Jefferson’s ring. When me and my mom found out that it was real and worth a few grand, my mom said we had to turn it in to the police because it wasn’t ours and it was the right thing to do. I begged her, “No, please, no, we can’t do that. We need that money more than those weasels with their big fat fingers. They’re probably bad people and don’t deserve this ring.” She wasn’t buying it and said, “Sorry pal, we’re going to the police.”
So we shuffled off to the station and told the detective that I had found a diamond ring. I made up a story when and where I had “found” it and they said, “Okay, we’ll keep it for safekeeping and if no one files a report in 30 days, you honest, good Samaritans can keep it.”
I’d guess the detective knew I had ripped it off but he couldn’t say anything because we were returning it under the guise of “finding it.” That must’ve been a little frustrating to that guy I bet.
I prayed that the Jefferson’s wouldn’t call in to say that their ring had been stolen. Then, I would’ve been totally busted. I had to keep my story straight or else things would get a little bit sticky. I started to have some mild anxiety attacks, but nothing too serious.
I was sweating it out, for sure, but, believe it or not, I had a lot of experience by this time with intense anxiety. Not imaginary problems, like getting yelled at, but actual, life threatening, dangerous stuff.
I’d been attacked, abused, falsely accused as a small child of stealing and I’d been beaten, tied up, and tortured by my stepbrothers who locked me in a closet and tickled me.
I’d also been blackmailed and forced into all kinds of horrible situations. To me, this ring thing was mildly unpleasant, but I’d been through so much already that I was practically a pro at being in hot water situations. I couldn’t tell my mom that I had stolen the ring because once the cops knew about it I’d look like a total loser and get in a lot of trouble. So, I just laid low and hoped for the best.
A couple weeks went by and we got a call from the police. Someone had called in a missing ring and it checked out that the one I had “found” was the one they had “lost.”

I guess the Jefferson’s were too stupid to suspect that I had stolen it from them and they were just relieved to know that someone had turned it in. Or, maybe they’d reported that someone had stolen the ring and the fact that someone had “found it” and turned it into the police might’ve confused everyone just enough so that no one put two and two together and realized that I had babysat at the Jefferson’s exactly at the time the ring went missing.
I guess the fact that I had spaced and left the ring in my pocket and that a couple weeks went by might have increased the odds of people not keeping track of the timeline. Plus, how can you bust someone who returns a diamond ring into the lost-and-found at the police? It was an unusual case and maybe the cops and the Jefferson’s both thought all along that I had stolen it but what could they say?
We gave it back under the condition that we “found it.” I was in the clear, sort of, until things got a little strange. First, I got a $100 reward from the Jefferson’s. They were so happy that I’d found their ring because it was a family heirloom and worth $10,000. The jewelry guy had lied about its value because he probably would’ve offered us $800 and we would’ve taken the money without thinking and he would’ve sold it to some blue-haired lady for $8,000 or something.
Not only did I get a reward for being such an honest guy, but also word got out to the newspapers. Maybe the Jefferson’s called them, or maybe the cops did, who knows, but right after I got my reward, I got a call from the Valley News, our local paper. They’d heard that I had turned in an expensive ring and wanted to do a story on me.

A reporter came over the next day and took pictures of me in my tennis shorts, pushing my lawnmower with my big face with braces looking all honest and sincere. It got on the front page and I was a celebrity in my town for a short while. The article said, “Honest Youth Finds Ring.” The story went on and on about how I had found the ring and lost it in the laundry and how my mom found it and how we got it appraised and the whole story. People were coming up to me at the grocery store and shaking my hand and slapping me on the back for being such an upstanding citizen and a shining example of how honesty pays, etc. I felt a little bit like Benedict Arnold. It was getting weird.
Then, it got even weirder.
The article had also mentioned how I wanted to buy a piano and that I couldn’t afford to and that I was such a good boy that I would rather turn in an expensive ring than buy my musical instrument.
People were so moved by my story. Little old ladies started mailing me letters with a quarter inside to help me buy my piano. I got letters from priests and church people sending me dollars and checks. They couldn’t believe that I was such a good boy and a Good Samaritan and how I had resisted Satan and temptation.

Most people would’ve probably just kept a diamond ring if they’d found it. I felt like a real ratfink. Just knowing that random people would go out of their way to send me money because of a newspaper story made me feel weird. I had stolen a ring, been caught by my mom, returned it, got a reward, and then I became a local hero in the news! It made my grandiosity with low self-esteem grow exponentially in both directions. How bizarre my life had become. I knew I was on an unusual path, but strange things kept happening to me.

About two years later in high school, I finally got busted for stealing a stereo from a restaurant. I was with my friend, Todd, and I was showing off like usual and we were stoned and sneaking around the building after hours. I figured out a way to get in and we stole the stereo receiver, figuring that we could sell it somewhere for twenty bucks. The cops busted me because someone had tipped them off. I guess someone overheard me trying to sell it or maybe it was one of my weasel friends that wanted to see me get busted. It was a fateful moment when my mom answered the phone and she said it was the police and that they knew I was the one that stole the stereo. I was a terrible liar and maybe I just wanted to come clean because my conscience had been bothering me about a lot of other things I had already done. I’d had a good run of about four years of total criminal behavior and had gotten away with all of it. I would sneak into people’s homes in the middle of the night and just tiptoe around, like a little burglar nut job. Then I’d see what was in the fridge or maybe make a sandwich and then sneak away.

My mom got off the phone with the police and she knew I was busted. She just knew. I couldn’t get out of it. I suppose if I had denied it enough I could’ve gotten away with it, but the cops made it sound like they had conclusive proof and my mother just looked at me like I was a scumbag and I confessed the whole thing.
I couldn’t take being a criminal or being at war with the world anymore. It was too big of a job. It was too hard to keep that hate and fear and anger going.
In a weird way, it was a relief to finally be busted. Living a double life was so exhausting, plus you had to keep track of all the lies and always be ready to bullshit your way out of one more uncomfortable situation. People with A.D.D. make bad criminals.
I had to go to the police department with my step-dad. I was mostly uncomfortable being around him 99% of the time to start with, and we had to sit down together with Detective Gianacolli and tell him what I’d done. It was an extremely uncomfortable situation. I was a tall, skinny, awkward teenager who for many reasons hated authority of all kindsand here I was at the police station again, totally busted. Detective Giancolli pulled out a list of about 50 unsolved mysteries, from stolen cars to burglaries, including vandalism and all kinds of stuff. He said that I wouldn’t get in any more trouble if I confessed to any of those crimes. I said, “Are you sure? He said, “Positive, 100%, you will not get in any more trouble.” I guess he just wanted to check off some unsolved crimes so he wouldn’t have to keep wasting his time investigating stuff.

I took a long look at the list and there was a bunch of stuff on there that I had done. I was like, “Yeah, I did that one, and that one, and oh, yeah, that one; uh-huh, that was me on that one too.”
I checked off about eight things, from stealing kegs at the Dartmouth frats to breaking into a restaurant, to joyriding in three separate cars, to a couple break-ins. I was a pretty active little criminal in my teens.
The detective kept his word and I didn’t get in any more trouble. But I was already in plenty of trouble. In fact, for all I know, he could’ve totally narked on me and told the juvenile court people everything on the list I had done and they could’ve all pretended that they didn’t know anything and just thrown the book at me and made me do 2,000 hours of service work. I guess I shouldn’t have been mad at the police for out foxing me, or the local juvi people for making me do ridiculous punishment work stuff.
Since I wasn’t 18 years old nothing went on my adult record, but I had to go to juvenile court and sit in front of a roomful of the town’s goodie-goodie parents who were my judges. Some of them were my old Cub Scout leaders, and an old basketball coach’s wife, and everyone knew everyone in my town and that just made it worse.
Another day of humiliation and having to sit there with my parents, who were more than pissed at me for all the crap that I had done. They probably weren’t mad at me because of how it was going to affect my life, but because it made them look like bad parents. I suppose a lot of folks are like that, but who knows, maybe I was the only one in town who had narcissistic parents.

I probably was just reaching out for attention because I was so desperate for the love that I wasn’t getting. That’s probably it-I just wanted to be loved. I just wanted to be noticed. Somewhere in my childhood I’d gotten lost in the shuffle and swept under the rug.
My punishment was doing 200 hours of community service. My probation officer asked me if I could do anything special and I said that I could play the piano. She told me that I could choose to work off my hours playing the piano at the old folks home.
I guess it could’ve been worse. But then again, have you ever been to an old folks home? I had to sit there and play the piano for hours on end with a bunch of old-timers in wheelchairs, all sitting around me in a big room while they complained and wheezed and coughed and scratched and fidgeted and told me about their kidneys failing and how they have gas. It was just about a fate worse than death. But, oddly enough, I knew a lot of old tunes and it was good practice. I had a music book called “Hits of the 90′s”. The 1890′s, that is. Those old tunes were actually pretty fun to play.

Mimi Malcolm, my probation officer, was in her mid 30′s and really attractive. She was also one really wise tough cookie. I was supposed to report to her once a week for an hour or so. But after I got to know her, I asked her if it was okay to see her twice a week.
She was the only person in my life that I could actually talk to honestly about what was going on in my inner life, inside my head. She was a very compassionate, wise old soul who totally helped me sort out things that were bothering me and I owe her so much gratitude. During a time when I was just looking for understanding, compassion and love she gave me all of that, and more. Our time together had a profound impact on my life. I never stole another thing after working with her.
Towards the end of our time together, Mimi became ill with cancer. We would meet twice a week, per my request, and she’d be wearing a hat because of the chemotherapy’s side effects. Mimi was a guiding star in my life and she was dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it. I’ll never understand why it had to happen to her.

What started out as me being a typical common thief, and then getting tons of accolades from the newspaper for being an honest youth, to finally getting busted to meeting Mimi Malcolm and then finally losing her after all that just goes to show that one never knows what’s going to happen in life. Those who care to pay attention and notice the subtle workings of the universe will understand that there is divine order in a seemingly chaotic universe.