http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2007-06-2011%20use.mp3
When I was 12, my peers in the neighborhood formed an elite and highly secretive organization called the Dog Do Club. I was invited to join, but one of the prerequisites was that I shoplift something.
I just couldn't do it. Even though I was eager to join the Dog Do Club and enjoy all the prerequisites that no doubt came with membership.
"Pick something small," they told me. "A pack of gum. Nobody's asking you to steal a TV set."
I just couldn't do it.
Not because I was a person of great rectitude or inner conviction. I couldn't do it because I was afraid of the shame and the punishment and the nebulous fall from grace that would accompany being caught. And I think I was right. Anyway, the Dog Do Club didn't last a year.
The more I read about shoplifting, the more it seems like a crime whose sanctions, both legal and cultural, seem disproportionately huge.
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