Wisdom in Nonsense by Heather O'Neill

Author:Heather O'Neill [Heather O’Neill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781772124002
Publisher: The University of Alberta Press

LESSON 8

Crime Does Pay

WHEN HE WAS YOUNG, my dad had been a great criminal. He was very proud of these years. Not having pursued a life of crime was his greatest regret, I think. He wished he could have been one of the gangsters that Martin Scorsese made movies about. He thought their lives were wonderful. They had escaped their class with a vengeance, exacting a reckoning on everyone who had belittled them, and then everyone else, just for good measure. What was there not to love? We watched every gangster film many times.

My dad believed that, under certain circumstances, breaking the law was not a great moral dilemma. He definitely had a lax view about stealing, because he did it all the time.

As a child, I was crazy about cheese. So in the evenings my father would stop at select grocery stores to steal the most expensive cheese on display. At home, he would arrange the cheese in cubes on a plate that was covered in a pattern of rabbits: blue cheese, camembert, gruyère. He would pronounce them in funny ways because he couldn’t read really well. He would bring out the plate while we were watching television, and we would eat them with frilly toothpicks. We’d turn from the episode of The Benny Hill Show and nod at each other whenever the mouthful was particularly delightful.

I think no one would argue that if a parent steals for a child, they should not be convicted of anything at all. This is a crime driven by necessity. It is almost a duty to commit such a crime. However, would one argue that it is necessary to steal outrageously expensive cheese for one’s child when said child has developed a taste for such?

I developed a taste for very expensive cheese. My father said my taste in cheese showed I was refined. It proved I was a French aristocrat. He continued to steal delicacies from the supermarket for me throughout my childhood.

“Caviar, milady!” He said one night, pulling a tiny jar out of his left pocket.

“Ooooh!” I declared.

From out of his other pocket, he pulled a box of tiny marzipan apples. What could I do but applaud and throw my arms around his neck?

By the end of his life, we would have to travel a mile by city bus before he could go to a grocery store. He had been banned from all the ones in the neighbourhood. Nobody was going to put you in jail for stealing a fancy imported bottle of olive oil for your child, but they would bar you from ever returning again.

The take-away from this was that I should not settle for what was offered to me in life. I should want more than what my father could afford. And I was expected to find methods other than stealing to get them.

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