I accidentally took a screwdriver from Sears as a toddler. Been stealing screwdrivers every day since /s

I’m told it was mother’s heart.

Gum. I was maybe 7 yo. My mother took me back to the store and made me apologize.

A newspaper.

Did not know it was stealing… I was … maybe 7?

Up until that point in my life, I’d only ever been to stores or restaurants that had free flyers or small community newsletters.

First time I was in a similar small store, I assumed full, 30+ page newspapers worked the same way.

After being informed that full newspapers cost money, and I had stolen it, I returned it.

The store clerk did not even realize I had taken the paper, laughed, appreciated my honesty, and gave me a tootsie pop.

My mom’s heart.

M:tG cards back in the late 90s.

There was a local comic book store called (no shit) The Funk Pit, which kept the mid tier cards stored in 3 ring binders full of those plastic card sleeves, and common cards stored in an “Inch Box” where they just charged you by the height of your stack. My friend and I would occasionally sneak a more expensive card out of the binder and slip it into our stack from the Inch Deck that cost $1.25.

There’s no way we were the first or last to do it, but I felt kinda shitty about it for years after.

I read a YA book about someone methodically planning, then stealing a computerized chess board (a big deal in the 80’s/early 90’s). They recorded people saying different words for the audio message telling the clerk to lock themself in the BATHROOM, timed it out, etc. While this obviously wasn’t me, it always stuck with me, and I somehow got secondhand guilty from it…

A prop gift in a store after holiday season. It was just about tiny enough to fit in my pocket. Imagine my disappointment when I tore off the wrapping paper and found a cube of Styrofoam. I was like 5 at the time.

According to my mom, the calcium off her teeth.

“My dentition was so great, but then you came.”

I used to put things in my vest pocket when I worked at Walmart and “accidentally” take them home. I was a twenty-something but I fucking hated that place and felt like I deserved more.

A tiny dinosaur eraser when I was like 6 or 7?

It was a red and green plastic pencil sharpener shaped like a dachshund. You stuck your pencil in his butt. I stole it from a desk in Sunday School. I stole from God.

In first grade? There was this little Hot Wheels style car that could transform into a robot man. I loved that little thing. Top favorite toy in the classroom.

Took it home one day. I was too afraid to play with it, so I just stuffed it into the box with the other toy cars. I was also too afraid to return it after a while. I still have it, and the guilt over taking this thing lives rent-free in my head.

In kindergarten, a small suction-cup hourglass. The suction cup has already decomposed, but the rest is fine.

Yes, I still have it.
Unlike the pony from MLP (Twilight Sparkle) I had to “borrow” forever to someone else from family because I was a boy and had no business having a “girl toy”. I also stole it in kindergarten. It was small, hard plastic figure coated with some plush-like coating. It was worn off at bottom of the legs.

I still remember it, I didn’t forget. Ironic. What I stole was stolen from me.

A bottle from mad dog 20/20 from a gas station. I was like 15. Me and some buddies wanted to get drunk, none of us had fake IDs, and the weed dealer who normally supplied the booze wasn’t answering his phone. 5 of us went in, my buddy Brian volunteered to be tribute, and he grabbed a case of beer and just went to walk out the door with it. While the clerk was distracted dealing with that, we shoved mad dog in our pockets, and then went to the register with sodas. Brian dropped the case of beer and booked it. It was a very smooth operation.

Didn’t steal anything else for years, until I was like 18, and we were so poor that my mom and I started shoplifting out of genuine necessity, while waiting on her disability to kick in.