The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today a friend of mine called Antoine showed me his laptop and said, "Hey Paul, you can steal this?"

On his laptop screen was a webpage with a photo of a sleeping bag. Next to the photo were the words, "Woods Fernie Lightweight Insulated Cool Weather Sleeping Bag w/ Compression Sack, 4°C. $79.99".

"You want me to steal a sleeping bag?" I said.

"Oui," he said. "I need him for trip I make to Gaspesie. You know Gaspesie?"

"No."

"Oh. Well I go there and I need this. If you can steal him, I give you forty dollaire."

Forty dollaire was a lot of money. Also, I don't have a job, or any source of income at all for that matter. So I agreed.

The sleeping bag was at a shop called Canadian Tire, so I cycled my bike over there. I knew I'd found the right place because of the words CANADIAN TIRE in giant red letters outside the building. So I locked my bike to a bike rack and went inside.

The place was huge and they sold more things than I could have ever dreamed of. Power tools, chainsaws, espresso machines, 100" TVs, bikes, hockey sticks, hockey skates, hockey helmets, anything to do with hockey really, huge bags of charcoal ($17.99 each and stacked up in the middle of the main aisle in a Jenga-like tower). And as per the Canadian way, everything was stacked neatly and not a product was out of place. And true to the shop's name, they even sold tires. Though whether these were Canadian tires or tires made cheaply in China, I don't know.

Couldn't my French friend have asked me to steal some of this shit instead of just a sleeping bag? I don't know: given the choice between a 100" TV and a $80 sleeping bag, I'd have gone with the TV. Then again, it would have then been me tasked with figuring out a way to get the TV out of the store without any one noticing, and I don't think I could have managed that.

So the sleeping bag it was. I started walking down the main aisle, looking left and right down the other aisles for signs of sleeping bags. I saw a couple of people dressed in bright red employee uniforms. I thought about asking one which aisle the sleeping bags were in, but then I decided against it; I didn't want to attract attention.

I found the sleeping bags half an hour later in the camping equipment aisle. (Aisle 81 of 84). They were between the tents and air mattresses. I searched through the dozens of sleeping bags and finally found the one my friend wanted. Now all that was left to do was to steal it.

My heart was beating faster. I glanced left and right to make sure no one was watching. No one was. Then I looked up at the ceiling for cameras. All I could see up there were the store's fluorescent strip lights. So I whipped a plastic carrier bag out of my pocket and stuffed the sleeping bag into it. Bags within bags; it was bags all the way down.

Let me tell you about carrier bags. A simple carrier bag is the shoplifter's tool of choice. All you have to do is put stuff the stolen item into a carrier bag and then walk out the store. 99% of the time, no one will stop you; they'll just assume that whatever's in your carrier bag is something you bought earlier, like a dildo and a bottle of lube, or a Barely Legal magazine. That's the genious of a carrier bag. No one can see what's inside it, so no one knows there's stolen goods inside.

And a carrier bag is such an everyday item that you look still like a normal shopper. Trust me: don't stuff stolen goods down your pants; put them in a carrier bag instead and then just simply walk out the shop. Works 99% of the time.

But there's always the 1% chance that someone will stop you and ask to see what's in your bag. Like this time, for example.

All I had to do was leave the store. So I walked back the way I came, all the way back down the main aisle. When I got to the checkouts, I saw there was a long line of customers.

The only way out was to push through them. "Excuse me," I said, pushing my way through the queue. "Sorry, coming through."

"I'll need to see what's in that bag," said the cashier.

I looked up. She was a middle-aged woman sitting at the till.

"I'll need to see what's in that bag," she repeated.

Shit.

"Sure," I said and nonchalantly handed over the carrier bag.

Everyone in the queue was staring as the cashier opened the carrier bag. She reached her hand inside and from it, pulled out the sleeping bag.

"What this?" she said, holding up the stolen sleeping bag. The store's tags were dangling off it by a thin piece of plastic.

"It's, uh, it's... I bought it from here an hour ago," I lied.

"Do you have the receipt?" she asked.

"Ah, no, I must have dropped it," I said.

"Oh," she said. "Well, don't worry, I'll just scan the label."

She scanned the label, the machine went BEEP, and something on the screen made her frown.

She waved a security guard over. He looked bored and impatient.

"This is coming up as unpaid," she whispered to him.

The security guard looked me up and down. What he saw was a respectable-looking white man in his mid-thirtes (I was actually in my mid-twenties but my hairline said otherwise). I didn't fit the stereotype of a shoplifter. I wasn't wearing a baseball cap, nor did I have a coat with million pockets. I wasn't from an ethnic minority. I wasn't an adolescent wearing a hoody and baggy jeans. I looked completely ordinary and didn't fit the profile of shoplifter at all.

And, on my part, I did my best to look innocent — I smiled and tried to look stupid. Which was surprisingly easy because I actually am stupid.

Then he said, "Can you come with me?"

"Yeah, no worries," I said cheerfully.

He picked up the sleeping bag and walked over to his office, which was just a few feet from the checkout.

"Wait here," he said. Then he went into his office with the sleeping bag. Presumably he wasn't going to use it to take a nap with.

I was left to wait outside the office. I guessed the security guard was checking the CCTV footage to see if any of the cameras had recorded me taking the sleeping bag from the shelf and stuffing it into a carrier bag. As far as I knew, none of the cameras had seen me, but I didn't want to wait there to find out, just in case a secret camera had seen me after all.

So I started thinking of an escape plan. I noticed that the exit doors were just a few feet away. There they were: the glass automatic doors, opening and closing to let people in and out. Through the doors I could see the car park, the open air and sweet freedom. They were literally right there, just a few steps away. If the security guard had wanted me to escape, he couldn't have told me to wait in a better place.

The cashier had gone back to serving customers and was scanning her way through a conveyor belt of full saucepans and power tools. None of the customers in the queue were looking at me anymore. In fact, it seemed no one was watching me at all.

Could escape really be this simple? I thought. I looked around again to see if anyone was watching me. No one was. So I took my chance and started walking towards the exit doors.

A moment later, I outside. I couldn't believe it. I was out of the store.

But now what to do? I could start running. I'm a pretty fast runner, especially when motivated, like now. But my bike was still locked to the bike rack. I couldn't leave old Betsy behind, for the simple reason that I didn't want to spend money on a new bike.

So I walked to the bike and pulled the bike lock key out of my pocket with a shaking hand. I unlocked the bike lock, swung my leg onto the bike's saddle and began to pedal away.

I was halfway across the car park when I decided to look back. I don't know why I looked back. Maybe it was just out of simple curiosity. Or maybe it was an instinct honed by millions of years of evolution, millions of years of cavemen and our monkey ancestors getting their heads smashed in for failing to detect a predator behind them. All I know is that I looked back. And this is what I saw:

THE SECURITY GUARD WAS RIGHT BEHIND ME!!!

He was sprinting after me like the T-1000, or Susan Boyle chasing an ice cream truck. And he looked angry.

He reached out his arm to grab me and — perhaps it was just my imagination — I felt his fingertips brush against the back of my t-shirt. I shrieked like a little girl and began pedalling faster. I pumped those little girls' bike pedals like never before.

Thank Christ I had a bike today. Because even though it was a shit girl's bike, it was still faster than anything on two legs, including the security guard. The security guard couldn't keep up. Soon he was left behind, panting and wheezing and shaking his fist. I had escaped! Praise be to Thomas F. Bicycle, inventor of the bike!

But if I'd been just one second slower in getting on my bike, he would have caught me, and I could be serving a life sentence in Canadian Alcatraz. All for stealing a sleeping bag.

After a long and scary bike ride home, which included crashing my bike into a brick wall out of panic, I finally made it, wheezing and shaking, back to the hostel. In a weird juxtaposition to the terror I still felt, the atmosphere in the hostel was chilled and relaxed. People were chilling out and playing cards. A couple of Asian girls were cooking dinner.

My legs were shaking as I collapsed into a chair. I was pale and my heart was still beating fast.

A guy called Declan was at the table. "You look like you've seen Death," he said.

I told him about everything that had happened: about stealing a sleeping bag, about the French-Canadian security guard chasing me, and even about crashing into the wall.

"Wow," he said. "Maybe you should stop shoplifting. Maybe this time was a warning. A warning you should stop now while you're still ahead."

He was right. I'd been stupid. I'd put my Canada trip in jeopardy just to steal a stupid sleeping bag and make forty dollars.

"You're right," I said.

Declan looked relieved to hear me say that.

"I can't believe I've been so stupid," I said. "I'll stop shoplifting."

"That's good, Paul. I'm happy for you. You're making the right decision."

"I'll stop shoplifting today sleeping bags," I said. "But everything else - food, clothes, art supplies - I'll keep on shoplifting."