Oh you CRIMINAL!

I was in the liquor store getting some boxes this morning. ("Are there boxes here? Have you seen any boxes?") As I went through their cupboards at the front of the store, the security guy pulled aside a man with a knapsack and retrieved four or five tall beer cans he was trying to steal. In a very low voice, the guard told the guy he was no longer welcome in the store.

I don't have a problem with this--the guy was in his mid-60s, maybe 70--and the idea of taking any further action raises the question of why on earth you'd ever do that. Still, the casualness of it all was eye-opening. I commented to the guard "You don't even take his picture?" and he pointed out that all the cameras in the store look after that.

I did wonder what would have happened if he had instead been an 18-year-old kid--especially a black 18-year-old kid. The guard was Indian and quite young himself.

(Related story: because I would move classrooms every two or three years, I used to keep a lot of boxes at the back of the room filled with books I didn't need to unpack for that particular year. They were almost all from the liquor store, with the logos and names of various kinds of whiskey and whatnot. Other teachers got a big laugh out of this, but no one in administration--if they even knew--every asked me to remove them from the classroom.)