What I left out of my confession

What I Left Out of My Confession

This is a story of crime, guilt, and repentance. It doesn’t involve the police and it doesn’t involve punishment, and it’s not really a story. More of a tale.

It was a warm July day in 1963. I was traveling to “Band Days” in Mason City, Iowa, with my friends Cindy, Merry, Diane, and a busload of Spring Valley High School marching band members. This was a big deal for us -- we were crossing a state line for our first out of town parade as newly minted ninth graders. Arriving in Mason City, we got off the bus, lined up for the parade, marched and played enthusiastically, and then we were done with our band responsibilities.  My friends and I gulped down our sack lunches, excited to be turned loose for a few hours to give the local merchants our meager business. Each of us had brought along two or three dollars, it being 1964 and not having (or needing) much money. As it turned out I didn’t spend my cash.

The biggest attraction for teenagers visiting Mason City was the dime store, a huge Ben Franklin, which was laid out with rows and rows of low wooden merchandise counters. Standing in the center of the store, a clerk or a customer could see from one side to the other and from the front to the back, unlike today’s Targets and Wal-Marts with tall shelves set up in a maze to keep shoppers filling their carts.

The countertops were recessed several inches, and lined with dividers to sort items by type. The hair goods counter contained hairbrushes, combs, hairnets in paper wrappers, bobby pins, hair clips, Dippity-Do, and other essentials, each grouped in a separate section by the dividers.

We meandered through the store, eventually making our way to the jewelry counter to admire earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings. Friendship rings, plain or simply-edged half-inch metal bands, were popular with girls our age in the early 1960’s.  This Ben Franklin store had several large, shallow trays lined in velvet holding friendship rings sorted by size, each with a price tag attached with a short loop of string. Pretending we were getting engaged or married, we tried on rings we liked, all the while laughing nervously and acting like we were having more fun than we were actually having. Our jitters came from a pact we’d made earlier, that we’d steal something from the dime store. We’d heard from older band members that this was common practice for freshman band members, although in retrospect, we might have been set up.

In those days, there were no security cameras---the low countertops allowed the clerks to keep an eye on customers. Fortunately for this particular pack of thieves, the Ben Franklin was buzzing with high school band members from all over southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa, keeping every employee occupied so we could commit our crime. One by one, each of us sneaked a ring into a pocket, and one by one, we walked casually toward the exit, joining each other on the sidewalk in front of the store. No security cameras, and no magnetic strips on the price tags to set off electronic beepers. We were home free.

That’s when the guilt began. Miles of guilt from Mason City, Iowa, across the border to Spring Valley, Minnesota, and months of guilt after that. I loved my $2.00 silver-colored friendship ring. I had enough money to pay for it, but I stole it instead. So what did I do about it? One wintery Sunday morning, after I’d gotten months of guilty pleasure wearing it, I put it in the church collection plate. I went to confession several times after my act of thievery, too, but I never mentioned it to Father Derezinski for fear that a priest who condemned women to hell for wearing fingernail polish to church might be overly harsh on a 15-year-old who participated in a jewelry heist. Putting the ring in the collection plate was my repentance.

September 12, 2015