Day Sixty-nine - Burn

What I am about towrite, I write with no sense of elation whatsoever. It's something that, though in a big way I feel no shame about having done in some specific instances, in some others I do bear a cross with me that will neverv fully fade away. So what am I talking about? Wel, in the early '90s, and I do mean very early, like either '90 or '91, I started to take a linking to stealing. And by this I mean stealing either from my grandmother's purse, or from a stash of rolled up coins she had. Only the once did I muster the courage to take money from off my father's wallet, but that was ultimately a let down. Where we were living at the time, and though my brother had a crappy scooter that could take us from home, we couldn't really go to the big city, so we settled in going to a somewhat nearby small town that had maybe a record store, and maybe you could find some toys in some shops, but ultimately we didn't find anything at all where we could spend that money on something we really wanted. I can't remember now if we actually bought something that time or not, but I don't think so. That took out all the oomph from the act of rebellion I'd just performed. But my father deserved it - I've written before that he was hard and harsh, and whenever he was mad at us, whether justified or not, he'd take our toys away and lock them somewhere. Some we got, some others we'd never see again. And I know, we weren't good students, neither me nor my brother - who was even worse at school than me - and maybe parents do take that measure of pride in knowing that their kids are good students. And also it may be true that we weren't always the best of sons, and he felt slighted, and that's how he took it out on us. 

But taking my stuff away - it was more my stuff than my brother's, who was now a teenager who cared very little for toys - also slighted me. And so I resorted to stealing, and I don't think I did it very often, but I did it enough times that my grandmother started to notice. She never spoke to me about it, but she did talk to my father. One day, as I was coming home - I can't recall if either from school or from somewhere else - I found him waiting in our living room. He was sitting down in the couch, with a smouldering look on his face, and as soon as he saw me come in - I don't think I even had time to say 'hello' - he leapt from the couch and grabbed me at once and started punching me, all the while my grandmother was watching what was happening. I think that hurt more than any pubch he landed on me, though I fully deserved them. That didn't keep me from stealling again, though. I'd just have to become more creative.