OPEN POST: Sticky Fingers, Shoplifters and Cadbury Eggs for 100.

True Confession: I once shoplifted with my friends when we were 13. Bold and with a lack of fear that only accompanies youth, we stuffed our bookbags full of cosmetics from the makeup aisle in a grocery store. It was a local California chain that I shall not name in case the statute of limitations hasn't run out. I may still be considered a fugitive. I am unsure, but why take chances? The FBI can still throw my ass in prison. 

Regarding our schoolbags, when I say stuffed, I mean jam-packed with anything we could get young sticky fingers on. We had an intricate, dare I say, brilliant system, too. Like the budding criminals we were, our plan was executed with precision. We distracted the bored, older woman worker who had been eyeing us with far too much interest by knocking over a display with a loud OH I AM SO SORRY! Like we foresaw, she shot us the barely concealed look of hostility and resignation and started reorganizing the cardboard cutout of some model with shelves of shampoo or something. I can't remember that part. I just know the lady who seemed ancient to us, most likely 25 or 30, got to work and seemingly forgot the suspicious teens lurking near the Loreal. 

Lipsticks, eyeliner, and eyeshadow were our favorites, along with loads of Maybelline mascara to pass out to our friends. We planned to sell what we didn't want. Like I said, budding, future felons. Our mission was more successful than we could have imagined, and we spent the rest of the afternoon divvying out our bounty of misbegotten cosmetics. 

To this day, I am still close to my cohort, and we still laugh at our brief stint as shoplifting teens. We found the whole thing thrilling. However, my mother asked me a million questions about where I got so much stuff. She was not easily deterred. And tried to break me with sneaky interrogation techniques, but I wasn't fooled. I saw straight through her, or so I thought. The lady has a doctorate in psychology. I was no match for her, really, but I imagined I was winning.

I said nothing. I had less than 10 dollars to my name, and suddenly had about 150 dollars worth of drugstore-brand cosmetics. She was so nosy that I realized it wasn't worth lifting anything again if this was the result. And that was the end of my career as Sticky Fingers la Fleur. By the way, that was her actual technique: berate me and bug me until I never did it again. I know this because she told me years later. That woman knew the products were hot all along and ruined my enjoyment of the whole thing.