Yeah, I Took It

I'm a thief. Not often, and not with any intent. The Mayo Clinic defines kleptomania as "the recurrent failure to resist urges to steal items that you generally don't really need and that usually have little value." They say it's a "serious mental health disorder that can cause much emotional pain to you and your loved ones if not treated." Before you call the cops on me, let me explain. 
I don't take things with any cognizance that I'm taking them. It's not uncommon for me to spend a day shopping and come home to find a big fat handful of pens in my purse from the stores I visited, because after signing my name with a flourish on various charge slips, I dropped each pen in my bag. I don't need pens. Geez! I have plenty of them from other shopping trips! I don't even notice that I'm taking them, I just do. But this will change. Pretty soon I'll find one of those little plastic screens in my purse after signing it with my fingertip.

Still, pens are small-time loot for me, unlike the day I ran some errands and looked at my passenger seat twenty minutes after leaving the bank drive-through to see the pneumatic tube capsule from which I'd retrieved my money and license.  I called the bank right away, and said, "Heh-heh, I kind of drove off with that capsule; I guess this happens a lot." And they said, "Uh, not really. How fast can you bring it back?" 

Or this week... when I went to the doctor's, and afterward spent a few hours working at Starbucks because I needed a change of scenery, and then fished in my purse for my car keys as I was getting ready to go, and ... what's this? The remote control from the doctor's waiting room TV? I scanned through several mental scenarios that were all designed not to reveal my identity as the remote burglar, like driving to my doctor's office late at night or early in the morning before they opened and leaving it tied to the front door (after I cleaned my fingerprints off of it, of course).

But seeing as how that was only going to punish the rest of the patients that wanted to flip channels as they were waiting, I drove it back and sheepishly gave it to the irritated nurse behind the front desk.  She wasn't very nice about it, so on my way out I took a few pens. 

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie