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A shoplifter must be cool, must not be nervous, must not look like someone who might shoplift and must not really be a shoplifter but just casually walk out of the store holding an item and stopping to chat with the shopkeeper.

Twas the day after Christmas and all through out Galveston not a creature was shopping except me and my daughter, Jenni. We had driven to Galveston to see the new house she and her husband had built and just moved into, and as women are want to do, we went shopping in the Antiques district. Jenni wanted some things to decorate her house and I just love suggesting things almost as much as I enjoy helping someone spend their money.

We hit every shop on the island including the Salvation Army’s thrift shop because she has found some great things there. After two hurricanes, Galveston had a wealth of castoff once treasures just waiting for someone with an imagination to snap up. Jenni has done this in spades. From the Salvation Army she found a huge but minimally damaged wooden desk and bought it for ‘a song’ as they say and spent a few bucks having it refinished and it occupies an elegant spot in the living room/study.

The last shop we went into I saw an antique hand mirror and picked it up to look at more closely. I have a friend who collects antique mirror’s and displays them on her guest bathroom wall and I thought although her birthday is not until summer that I ought to buy this mirror and put it back for her birthday. I have a drawer in my closet that I keep gifts that I intend to give at a later time and I have learned to also put to whom I intend the gift or you know what happens, I look in there and see the gifts and wonder, "Who in the world is this for?"

Jenni is a quick shopper and I was tagging behind liking to look at more things in detail but clutching the hand mirror as I strolled the shop and looked. Often storekeepers will either come along and ask if you’d like them to take the small items you have purchased to the counter so that you can continue shopping unencumbered, but not this time. I guess that is what I was thinking as I continued to look for another treasure, mirror in hand.

Jenni didn’t find what she was wanting so after about 40 minutes we passed the counter where you’d check out and stopped and chatted with the owners for about 10 minutes about shoplifters and the pitfalls of running a mall type business…all the time I am standing in front of them with my purse over one arm and waving the hand mirror as I spoke (the Cajun influence of talking with hands flying) and then departed saying, "Have a happy and prosperous New Year".

Jenni and I left walking a full long block and once again I said something to Jenni who was beside me and to my left and again talking with my right hand that amazingly still held clutched there; THE HAND MIRROR from the antiques mall. I practically screamed to Jenni, "Oh my gosh, I still have THE MIRROR!"

Quickly we turned around and started back to the store with Jenni admonishing me with that noise that daughters make when outdone with their unwitting or embarrassing mothers, "MUTHER, Oh my gosh, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" I wanted to say to her, "Well you are an accomplice because you walked out with me and said NOTHING." It was obvious that neither of us had snapped to the fact that I was not only ‘holding but carrying’ and I was just hoping to get back to the store before it became apparent what I had done and to see that they were coming after me hollering, "Lady, Lady, you haven’t paid for the mirror."

We came back to the shop and opened the door and there were the shopkeeper and two vendors still talking and visiting and none of them seemed to understand why we were back and yet I still had the mirror in hand, they said, "Did you forget something?" Yes, I replied, it seems I have forgotten to pay for this hand mirror!

I apologized and they said no problem as they had never noticed that I was ‘carrying’ and that it was their job to watch people leave. I handed over the mirror and I asked if they had some sort of ‘discount’ for people who though they ‘shoplifted’ did in the end returned to pay and she kind of laughed and said "Sadly we don’t and if we did give those discounts we’d really be in the red because of the shoplifters who don’t come back.

I am convinced had I been a real shoplifter I would never have made it past the front door, but because I was unaware of what I had done I showed no guilt. I think it may have taught the shopkeepers a lesson about watching what goes in and out the door and what may be carried out in plain sight. Did I mention that Jenni and I were the only customers in the store and so being distracted by many customers coming and going had nothing to do with their not noticing us and leaving with the mirror?

Once when I had a shop in Fredericksburg I had a $250 quilt that was displayed on the wall in my booth and it was stolen. To get out of the mall there, everyone had to walk right past the check out counter and I guess my shoplifter did on purpose what I did in Galveston without realizing it, they must have wrapped that yellow and white quilt around their shoulders like a stole and said, "Bye, now, thanks for letting me look around," and away they went carrying my quilt in plain sight and not hiding it.

The moral to this story is that if you need to shoplift you will probably get caught and embarrassed and prosecuted, and if you just happen to absentmindedly walk out with something you didn’t pay for more than likely you won’t be caught although I don’t recommend it. You could of course just keep on walking if you are so inclined or you could do as I did, run like heck back to the shop and pray you get back there before they realize you left with THEIR property and come looking for you on the street. I just know that my daughter is going to tell her friends or her sister what her 74 year mother did at the antiques mall, like ‘age’ had anything to do with it! Another "Muther" story.