4. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT & Water Park Panties: A Western prophecy

Part I of C&P: Reflecting on the extraordinary man (Parts I-III)

I was nine years old when I stole another girl’s underpants at Splash Water Park in Rockville, Maryland.

If I was a fictional character, this behavior suggests a deviant in the making, a loose foreshadowing of my ability to mend my ethical boundaries to whatever I needed. At the end of the film, before I drive my car off a cliff or cackle behind jail cell bars, I reach into my baggy pocket and release a fistful of wadded-up cotton. A pair of panties! Not my own! “How the hell did she get those?” the prison guard / backseat passenger / lover-to-enemy says. “Wait, are those mine?”

Unfortunately, maybe for all of us, that is not, and will not, be me. (Knock on wood.) My recurring criminal trait is walking in the crosswalk when the red hand tells me to stop. In fact, I could afford to let loose. Do a drug or something. Flambé a dessert. Go to one of those 3 a.m. concerts where the light display blocks out the rising sun. All of this to say, I’m a well-trained pup, I like obedience in my l…