Vickie Fee

Candy-coated memories

       When I was a kid, my mom was very protective. I could ride my bike from corner to corner. But not around the block. She wanted to stand in our driveway, turn her head to the left and to the right and be able to see me. On occasion she’d loosen the leash just a little. She’d let me walk, along with my little sister and two neighbors about my age all the way to the end of the next block to the neighborhood Stop ‘N Go convenience store. She’d give little sister and me just enough money to buy a candy bar and an Icee frozen drink. My red-headed neighbor was much bolder than I. She’d buy a slushy drink, a couple of pieces of candy, and she would steal a couple of pieces of candy, too. Not because she was hungry or poor, mind you. She just liked the rush of knowing she could get away with it. 

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I was always worried she’d get caught, and the cops would haul all of us down to the police station. I honestly never understood the thrill it gave her. She called me a scaredy cat. She was right. I told her she should stop shoplifting, that if she didn’t she’d get caught eventually. I never told the store manager about her thieving. I also never told her mother — or mine. 

We were church-going folks. Not that I was sinless. But to the best of my memory, I never stole anything. A couple of the girls in my Sunday school class actually took the quarter or fifty cents their mom or grandmother put in their offering envelope to instead spend later on candy. That seemed like stealing from God to me, which struck me as even worse than shoplifting from the corner market to my young but well-formed conscience.

I thought my parents were overly strict. Truth be told, I still feel they were overly strict about certain things. But my only ride in a police car was in the front seat, not handcuffed in the back seat. I did a police ride-along when I went through a leadership academy in the small town hubs and I lived in just outside Memphis. And the only time a police officer ever asked me to come down to the station was to look a some mug shots. I worked at Target during college. One afternoon, a woman with a child and a shopping cart full of merchandise came up to the customer service desk where I worked taking returns. She stood around for a couple of minutes, looking nervous, asked me for the time, then pushed the cart out the front door to a getaway car. She and her accomplice shoved stuff in the trunk and the back seat and took off. As they were pulling away, two people I knew as store security ran out after them as the car sped away.

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I was called to the local precinct a couple of days later and asked to look through some photographs. I didn’t have any trouble picking out the woman who had pushed the shopping cart out the front door. Not sure how it all turned out. I never was called upon to go to court to testify. I couldn’t help thinking about my red-headed neighbor with a penchant for shoplifting. I hope she outgrew it eventually. Despite the many times she made me feel uncomfortable, I didn’t like to imagine her behind bars.

Full disclosure: As you know, I’ve killed quite a few people on paper. And I’ve also had lots of encounters with speeding tickets, and spent two or three Saturdays in traffic school to get out of paying a ticket and to keep my insurance record clean. 

Growing up, did you ever have an encounter with the police? Have you ever had to report an incident to the police or testify in court? Served on a jury? Share in comments.

36 thoughts on “Candy-coated memories”

  1. I got stopped once in NH and his reason for pulling me over was that a blue car was stolen in MA. I’m like how many blue cars are there in MA? It was registered in my dad’s name to save money on insurance but I made all the payments. The cop says you could have stolen it from your dad. I think he just got a kick out of hassling teens.

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    1. Queen, the man was just giving you a hard time! A cop gave rattled my cage once when I was a teen. But it was enough to make me ease up on the gas pedal. I was speeding just a little (!) I didn’t get a ticket, but a motorcycle cop pulled up beside me at a stoplight and tapped on my window. I looked over and he was looking at me eye to eye. I’m sure he could see the fear in my wide eyes. He said, “You better slow down, missy!” I nodded obediently as I swallowed my Adam’s apple! I didn’t exceed the speed limit for at least a week.

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  2. I’ve had one speeding ticket in my life. One. I was 20. I had to take two college friends to the airport at Thanksgiving so they could catch their flight. In was snowy and I was pushing the edge of safety to get them there. The NYS trooper smiled nicely at my story, handed me my ticket, told me to slow down and have a nice day. My friends thought it was hilarious.

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  3. My only contact with the police as a kid was to get an officer who was a merit badge counselor to sign off on my marksmanship merit badge. As an adult, I’ve had a few traffic tickets. I served on a jury where we convicted a young man for shooting his uncle. The uncle got on the stand, pointed to the kid and said “He shot me!”. We figured that nobody would lie about the person who shot them.

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      1. Sounds like a movie, Tom! (And hey, when discussing personal run-ins with law enforcement, maybe “Anonymous” comes in handy, ha!)

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    2. WordPress still weird for me too, so I’m piggybacking on Tom’s marvelous story, which makes me jealous!

      As preface to mine, I’ll remind you I’m 7th of 8 kids before I confess to more than my share of encounters with police—none of which ended up with me in cuffs or anything. But I’ll have to regale you in person with my stories, preferably over drinks. Oddly, I’ve never had a traffic ticket and I’m desperate to be on a jury. Unfortunately, in more than 30 years at this address, I’ve only been called twice—once in 1997 when I was out of the country, and just recently when they didn’t need me. C’mon!!

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    3. Tom, Sounds like your jury delivered the right verdict! It had to be unnerving for that man to point out his shooter in court! — Vickie

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  4. When I was in the second grade, I was upset by something and decided I would defiantly walk home from school (a mile) by a different route. I got lost. I went to a house and told the nice lady what had happened. She called the police and they took me home.

    My uncle was a policeman so I had a positive view of police.

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  6. Vickie, I so relate to this. I struggle with a few past deeds in my miscreant youth. As an adult, I’ve received my share of traffic tickets. My specialty appears to be rolling a stop sign. But I did get pulled over to speeding on the Saw Mill River Parkway in New York once. I was on my way to the family GP and I showed the police officer the jar containing my urine sample. Wonder of wonders, that didn’t get out of a speeding ticket. But luckily, he didn’t charge me with anything else!!

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  7. As a kid, I was mostly on the sidelines. We’d have days when the police came into class to talk about safety and give out stickers. Though my group of friends and I once got a warning when we were walking home; one of the other kids decided to walk on a median, and we followed him.

    As an adult, I’ve gotten one traffic ticket–while trying to find a way to a client’s residence. Otherwise, my more recent interactions have been asking questions to cops at coffeeshops and online (research for my writing).

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  8. Hestia here,
    Don’t even get me started. Okay, you twisted my arm.
    Yes I was caught shoplifting as a teen, but no charges, because I have it back. I think it was a swimsuit? Why I did it, I don’t remember.
    Spent the night in jail once because of a domestic violence dispute. Everyone in the house was arrested. Pled to disturbing the peace. Hence, I am not allowed to own a gun because of that.
    As far as other stuff, never got passed the voir dire for a jury. At least so far.
    There was the time I was held at gunpoint in a restaurant, back in the early 90s in Denver CO. Gave a description to the cops, but was never called to testify. As of earlier this year, the one assailant is still in prison. Apparently he did more than just rob people.
    But yes, because of my job, I do testify in court. Countless times in civil court, 7 times in criminal court, with 2 more criminal cases coming up before the end of the year.
    *mic drop*

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  9. I’ve gotten a couple of tickets, but that’s been the extent of my encounters with the police. I did serve on jury duty once and been called a few other times. Like you, my parents were strict, and I’m thankful for it. I prefer my encounters with crime to be on the page.

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  10. Game Wardens were the local law where I grew up in rural Maine. Being from a rural area, though, I did get confused my first time driving in a “city” and police had to help me get out of a one-way situation.

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  11. I love this post, Vickie! It brought back so many memories of childhood: riding my bike around the block, and yes, watching terrified as a friend shoplifted candy. I was–and remain–a devout no-stealing kind of gal (and a chicken, which made it easy to be so), but I have to admit that I did enjoy the spoils of those ill-gotten goods. Pass up chocolate?! I think not.

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  12. Leslie, unlike you, I was the goody two shoes who narced on my friend for stealing a candy bar lol. When we got in the car the guilt that I had witnessed a crime and not spoken up became too much for me. I told my mom that David had taken a candy bar. We couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7. So Mom marched us into the store and asked the cashier if she could speak to the owner because it was just a mom and pop grocery. So Mom explained what had happened and David apologized to Mr. Reinker. He sternly told us not to steal again and that he appreciated the apology. A classic childhood tale and I wasn’t even the thief!

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  14. I used to live in NYC, and when moving by car once from TN to NH, I spent the night at a friend’s apt in the city. After I found a place to park around the corner, I went straight to my friend’s–carrying only my grandmother’s bisque baby doll. I had hardly unloaded the doll when I got a phone call that my fully-packed car had been robbed nd the contents were all over the street. I rushed back to find a Good Samaritan dog-walker who had found my number on some paper or other, and and called the cops. When they arrived they looked at me in disgust and said, “You called us for this? We could be pulling a dead body off a train right now.” I told them I needed a police report number for insurance or in case the bad guys took my passport or something. Never got the report, but later at a party I mentioned the incident to a friend who was a cop. Turned out he was a sergeant in their precinct. Oopsie. I got my report and they got rips.

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  15. Please forgive the late weigh-in on this fantastic–and fabulously interesting!–post!

    I have called the police on a couple of occasions. One of the most memorable was when a woman, who appeared to be having a mental health crisis, started rolling boulders down the butte that many people hike, bike, and drive. She sent huge rocks careening onto the road below, narrowly missing cars and people. I was frightened for her as much as those in the path of the rocks! No one was hurt and I believe she got the help she needed. ❤

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  16. Well, I thought my life was fairly boring, but then you asked all of these questions. I have gotten tickets for speeding twice in my life (one was in college, and one was when I was teaching and came down from an overpass and of course going downhill, I was speeding). Problem was my principal drove by while I was standing on the side of the road with an officer. Took classes to get rid of both of these. Then I got a going through a red light (though it was yellow at first) with a red-light camera. Paid that fine as they sent me a photo. When I was in my senior year in college and going home, the Highway Patrol stopped me and my roommate because they thought that I had stolen my parent’s car, we were underage for driving and were running away. Were they embarrassed when they saw my driver’s license. I have been called to jury duty everywhere I lived and most of the time chosen unless I was on standby. One was driving while intoxicated and driving into a building, putting away a person that was incapacitated and did something, two were burglaries, and another was a medical malpractice case. I can’t remember them all. Thank God that I am over 70 and do not have to go anymore. Probably called over ten or more times and served most of those. I never shoplifted. When I was a kid, a friend of mine were walking in her backyard and a guy exposed himself to us. He was in the bushes. We told our parents, and they caught the guy, but we never had to testify. Then when I was married and my husband was out of town, I had a peeping Tom at my window, I called the police, and they came out and looked. We found a footprint, but no one was ever caught. I looked at the footprint the next day and knew that it was a neighbor that was a police officer but could not really prove it. He and I had compared tennis shoe soles a few days earlier and it was his size and his print. So those are my stories. Whew!

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