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Delinquency Report
    By Herschel Cozine
    It was on the eve of my ninth Christmas that my innocence was shattered. I discovered to my dismay that Santa Claus was not a jolly old elf in a red suit. He was a middle-aged man with a beer belly and stained T-shirt; the man I called my father. I had already become an agnostic the year before when my Superman cape reeked of my father’s cigar smoke. But I ignored it in a futile attempt to maintain the myth.This particular Christmas, however, I caught him in the act of assembling my electric train on Christmas Eve after I had (ostensibly) gone to bed.
    I faced the revelation with mixed feelings. On the downside I had to lower my expectations of fancy presents and become a little more realistic in my requests. On the other hand I was no longer faced with the onerous task of maintaining good behavior, especially toward the end of the year when I expected Santa would be paying attention. Not that it seemed to matter. I could never find a correlation between my deportment and the quantity or quality of the presents I received. I suspected Santa was treating anything less than grand theft auto as a “boys will be boys” infraction not deserving of his attention. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.
    But that was over now. With Santa no longer an influence in my life I became a new person. It was the beginning of my life of crime.
    My first foray into the underworld occurred, quite by accident, at Woolworth’s five and ten cent store. I lifted a yoyo, retail value: five cents. This was during the depression when a penny still had some value. I had not set out to steal. But I found the yoyo lying on the floor in the toy department, begging to be stolen. In a burst of daring, I slipped it in my pocket and walked out the door, fully expecting the long arm of the law would descend on my head and I would be sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
    Nothing happened. Nothing, that is, until I got home. My mother, a species that is blessed with x-ray eyes, a naturally suspicious nature, and an intuition that beggars description, sensed my guilt and reacted as only a mother can.
    “Where did you get that?” she said, pointing to the yoyo.
    “From Jimmy,” I said.
    She frowned, and I knew I was in for a grilling.
    “Why would Jimmy give you his yoyo?”
    I thought quickly. “I traded my Bill Dickey baseball card for it.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that?”
    “I have two of them,” I said, which were the first words of truth uttered in the conversation. I made a note to get rid of one in case she decided to check it out.
    She nodded towards the yoyo. “It looks new.”
    “It is,” I said. (Another true statement.) “Jimmy got it in his stocking and didn’t want it. He hates yoyos.”
    She eyed me suspiciously. It was a test that I could not afford to fail. Although my insides had turned to jelly, I remained calm, matching her look with my own.
    It was my finest hour. After what seemed an eternity, she looked away. The stew she was stirring burped and she quickly lifted it off the burner and set it aside.
    “Dinner will be ready in five minutes. Go tell your father.”
    Thinking back on it, the stew had been my salvation. If I had had her full attention I could never had pulled it off.
    My father was a different story. He barely looked at me as I swung the yoyo in a wide arc near his head. One could park a stolen bicycle in the living room without fear of discovery by one’s father. They were wired differently. I filed that bit of information for future use.
    Emboldened by my “yoyo caper,” I visited the general store. We lived in a small town where our main source of groceries was the store on the corner. It was run by a husband and wife, a Swedish couple in their late sixties, with accents that made them hard for me to understand. Most of the goods were kept on shelves behind the counter. But just inside the door was a barrel containing large red