Can I Get You Anything Before I Go, Perhaps a Purloined Pumpkin?

There's really no other way to look at it: I'm a thief.

I didn't pay for it; it wasn't mine; and still I took it.

A big orange pumpkin sat all alone on the very bottom of a cart in the parking lot cart return at Target. Really big. One you could carve the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show into.





I considered taking it back into the store. But they would probably just resell it. I even thought about telling them to save it in customer service in case the rightful owners returned in a panic looking for it. But could I trust them to do that? Or the people to return?

I looked around, hoisted it into the back of my car, and went in to do my shopping. Which meant, of course, I had plenty of time to reconsider my misdemeanor.

We don't do Halloween out here at Four Mile. If you show up in a mask at night out here in the country, you'd better also be wearing a bullet proof vest. But I thought one of our grandkids might like to have the purloined pumpkin, and so there it ended up, amid several smaller ones on a porch in a township that shall not be named.

Two nights later, I awoke around 3:00 a.m.to lie in the dark wondering what kind of person I am. And I got really queasy realizing that given several choices I'd made the most self-serving one. I wanted to take the pumpkin back, but two days later? How would I explain the time lapse? Donate it to charity? I wondered about the family that had scraped together enough pennies and dimes to purchase it, about their plans for a carving party, maybe roasting the seeds. Maybe they didn't always have enough to eat.

I pictured them returning to the parking lot in a frenzie, their disappointment at finding their pumpkin gone, running into the store to ask customer service if some decent person had turned it in. I imagined the children's tears and obedient resignation as they were told the budget wouldn't allow for the purchase of another one. By 4:00 a.m., I'd decided that I was indeed a form of vermin, that I'd never truly known myself, and that the impossibility of undoing my vile deed was to be a punishment the likes of which I'd never before experienced.

I fell into the morning feeling rotten and riddled with regret. After all, I'm the good guy, the one everybody trusts to do the right thing. My husband says my final words on earth are likely to be, "Can I get you anything before I go?"

I confessed to my husband how ashamed I was and that I couldn't stop obsessing about my misstep. He was quiet for a moment, and then said, "Maybe the purchaser was a pedophile who was going to use the pumpkin to lure innocents to his door."

Boom! It was, I admit, a tad far-fetched, but also a possible scenario. And that was all it took to miraculously free me of the shame and self-loathing. Much the way people inevitably try to console themselves that at least they're not the worst people on earth, fortuitously there are always others who are even worse to look down on and blame. Which is apparently why even the thieving and most loathsome among us can still have nice things, like special holiday decor. (I'm still hoping it was a one off.)