Now THAT'S better

I was scanning the news stories a little while ago and it seemed like all I saw was bad. First case of highly drug-resistant TB found in US. Seniors worry about Medicare Advantage cuts. Jon Gosselin's NYC Apartment Ransacked. Weapon Involved in Charlie Sheen Domestic Dispute. It made me really sad.

I was about to just give up on the news for the night when a different kind of story jumped out at me. It made me feel a little better about the world.

It started out sad but it ended up warming my heart.

A woman in Italy went to retrieve the Christmas gifts she had hidden for her two toddler daughters and found they had been stolen out of the basement. Frantic, she rushed around town trying to buy new gifts from gas stations. She didn't want them to wake up on Christmas morning and not have anything under the tree. When the police found out what happened, they contacted a toy store owner in a nearby town. He opened his store at 4:00 a.m. just so the lady could get her daughters new gifts.

I hope they caught the low down thief that would steal presents on Christmas Eve and I hope they treat the toy store owner like a hero. If you ask me, that's exactly what he is.

The devil made me do it

You’ve heard that saying before, “The devil made me do it”, I’m sure. When I was growing up one of my girlfriends said it all the time. She was always doing things she wasn’t allowed to do and she always ended up getting caught. And that was always her answer… the devil made me do it.

I would laugh because I thought it was funny. The first time I heard her say it I didn’t laugh. I thought ‘oh boy, that can’t be good’ and waited on the reaction of her parents. They’d obviously heard it before because their reaction was a roll of the eyes and a humph while they were walking away shaking their head.

Because of my friend saying it often, I picked it up too and decided one day to try it out. I had the bright idea to go to Dairy Queen during our lunch break. It was right next to my high school and even though we weren’t allowed to leave campus, I did it anyway. And I got caught. I didn’t even make it to the Dairy Queen. I was halfway across the field when I heard “Miss Atchley” yelled in a not so happy voice. I turned around and saw our principal standing at the edge of the parking lot glaring at me. I knew I was in trouble.

I sat in the office, the nervousness building up in my stomach, for probably 20 minutes before my parents showed up. We went into the office and I sat there, not saying a word, while the principal told my parents what he had caught me doing and why we had a closed campus. It was dangerous for us to leave the school grounds. He was just trying to protect me.

I happened to glance at my father around the time the principal was finishing up his speech and when I saw the look on his face my brain shut down. I had no excuse except I really wanted a chocolate dip cone. He asked me what I was thinking and without thinking I blurted out THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT. Boy was that a mistake.

I got a pretty good spanking that night. My dad didn’t believe there was an age limit for spankings and even though I was a junior in high school he still burned my butt up pretty good. All because I blamed Satan for my bad decision. I won’t ever forget that spanking that’s for sure.

So this morning when I was looking through the headlines, one of them really jumped out at me. It said ‘Woman accused of church theft blames Satan’. I had to read it.

The 62 year old Washington woman stole $73,000 from the Arlington Free Methodist Church by forging her pastor’s signature on 80 checks. When detectives questioned her she said “Satan had a big part in the theft.” She also told them that she used the money to keep from losing her house.

I understand not wanting to lose your house but to steal from a church and then blame it on the devil just doesn’t work for me. My first problem is this: she worked at the church as an administrative assistant. She had a job. There are so many people out there right now that don’t have a job and are still trying to find honest ways to make money. I say she HAD a job; they fired her in February of 2008.

My second problem is that she worked for a church. They help people. I bet if she’d gone to her pastor and told him that she was having problems he would have at least tried to find a program that would help her.

Another problem I have with it (besides the obvious one of she stole from a church) is that the reason she says she took the money was to not lose her house. Mortgage companies will work with you. I know because when my first husband and I bought a house and then lost our jobs, Chase worked with us and allowed us to set up a repayment plan. All you have to do is talk to them. They even have programs for people that aren’t in the best financial shape.

Basically it all boils down to I just don’t buy it. The devil didn’t make her do anything. She had bad intentions in her mind and she followed through on them. I could tell you the story about my one and only time of stealing money (I was 12) and being caught but this post is running a little long. Maybe I’ll tell you another time. I will take the space to tell you that I definitely learned my lesson and that when I did it all that was in my mind was ‘I want that’. Oh, and that I made me do it.

To catch a thief... in aisle 3?

You just finished shopping at your local Walmart. Your items are on the conveyor belt heading toward the cashier. Seven pairs of jeans, four pair of slacks, a pair of scrubs, a bra, a sweat suit, a picture frame, laundry detergent, diapers, pizza, coffee, four 12-packs of drinks, canned vegies, air freshener, nachos, noodles, some frozen stuff, chips, ground beef, and a baby crib…total? $5.25. What?!

Yep. A 20 year old Natchez Mississippi Walmart employee was arrested for attempting to sell her friend $547.50 worth of merchandise for five bucks. The story in the Mississippi newspaper doesn’t say HOW they were busted for rolling back prices on their own, just that the 22 year old woman never left the store with the products.

What were they thinking? Oh wait, I know, they were thinking they could get away with it. I bet that kind of thing happens all the time but no one notices. With all the beeping going on from other registers around them I imagine it’d be easy to do. And unless you are involved in security for the store, you more than likely wouldn’t be watching the screen to see what was being rung up. Plus those people that stand at the exit doors and check peoples receipts only do that if something is out of a bag. That’d be easy to prevent too.

I’m not trying to encourage people to steal by explaining how easy it would be. I’m actually very disgusted by these people that think it’s ok to steal. They try to argue that it’s a big store (Walmart) so they can afford the loss but I believe even if they could afford the loss, we’re the ones that pay for it in increased prices so they didn‘t hurt that big store. They hurt me.

Everyone I know has worked hard their whole lives and paid for everything they own. I have no patience for people that won’t earn their own keep. And even less patience for those that want to take out of my pocket.

So needless to say, I’m happy these women were caught and arrested. I hope they at least get a hefty fine. And as far as the cashier goes, I hope it’s noted on her work record so that she doesn’t get the opportunity to raise prices in another store that I shop at.