Calvin Confesses

Someone asked me today if I would ever yell at a baby. "Of course not", I answered. They don't know what they are doing. Basically they are as dumb as sheep for the first couple of years so its not their fault. Thinking about the question later in the day I regretted not giving my real answer. "No, of course not but I have and I will steal from one".

In the summers of my youth we would take a bus every Wednesday and hang out in scenic Brandon Manitoba. It's a city in central Manitoba about twenty minutes drive from Camp Shilo where I lived. We would hang out downtown, visit the local record store to search the bins for some vinyl and stop at the second hand bookstore for comics. You kids have no idea how great it was to look for records when that was the form our music came in. Usually we would take in a matinee movie and find our way to the bus to take us home from the K-Mart.

This one day I lost my 10 dollars so we had no money for food after the theatre and we were hating it. Emptying our pockets we found that we only had enough change to get a small order of fries at McDonald's. Carefully we divided up our meager portion of potato delights and ate them as slowly as we could to savor the flavor.

After they were all eaten we were still starved. We were growing boys after all and needed our nourishment. About 3 tables away from us was a mother and her baby. The kid was in a high chair and in front of him was a LARGE pop, LARGE fries and a BIG MAC. WTF, we thought. What kind of mother feeds that much food to a baby. What kind of mother feeds a baby anything from McDonald's? Now before you ask let me tell you that YES, she had her own food in front of her. We just stared and shook our heads in silence.

Now there are moments in every person's life when you and your best friend reach an understanding about a situation without saying a word. Like if your buddy gets into a fight you just jump right in there regardless if you will get your ass kicked or not. It's just understood. You gotta back your buddy's play or what kind of civilization do we have? Really?

Suddenly the mother got up to get some Ketchup and napkins. Like two museum thieves we both got up and walked past the baby. He took the BIG MAC, and the large fries while I absconded with the large pop and the woman's apple pie. Beep Beep Zip Bang we were out of there like ghosts leaving no trail that we were ever there. It was an almost 'ninja-like' operation and we pulled it off with precision, grace, and style.

As I was heading for the door I took a chance and glanced back seeing if anyone had noticed. All I saw was a baby in a high chair with his eyes FIXED on us. I read in his face that he was thinking "WTF?" "You poached me, you are poachers."

We went out behind the K-mart and enjoyed our ill gotten booty with satisfaction. Sure we had all manner of rationalizations as to why we crossed that line but convinced ourselves that if that baby could talk he would have offered us his meal anyways and just chew on a couple of fries to his perfect contentment.

Am I going to hell for my crime? No (because I don't actually believe hell exists). If anything we helped that kid. We taught him that its a jungle out there and bad things happen to people EVERY day. So tighten your high chair security and keep your sweet noms close lest they be coveted by two punks like us.