View from the Ground Floor

When I Was Older

    I'm not certain if I was a wicked child. I never overheard myself as a topic of conversation being referred to as nefarious or meticulous; however, given the nature of my actions in this particular instance, I would be remiss to gratify myself as any sort of saint or whatever facet of meaning that could be extracted from the term.
    I'd stolen my grandmother's credit card. It hadn't been an accident or unintentional. At the time that I'd lifted it from the bordeau in her downstairs bedroom, I had anticipated her being in the bathroom. I scoped the situation and seized the opportunity by use of my prior knowledge of her schedule to commit theft. I knew the setup of her room to a fault. Large door, on the right, worn vintage dresser, three drawers down, pushed to the back, underneath the red envelope, VISA. She shouldn't notice it was gone for only a moment, I remember telling myself. Only a moment.
    Rushing upstairs to my bedroom, stolen item in sullied, adolescent hand, I hid the card beneath the computer monitor in my own bedroom. It was the family computer, but no one should have had any reason to be lifting the monitor. The dust had settled around the base. It hadn't been moved in months at least. I knew I couldn't use the card at that minute. Misdeeds are best commited in the quiet of night, when the sun rolls over, the birds fall silent, and the bumps and thumps of movement throughout the house ceased. Up I sat, far past my bedtime at 11 p.m., to log on to the computer. I'd known well that I'd done something immoral. I weighed the importance of my desire against the stain I'd beckon upon my conscience or the collateral damage that might've been my grandmother's feelings had she discovered my illicit act and decided to be selfish. I wasn't so young as to feign naivety of those consequences, but it wasn't enough to stop me.
    The desktop computer, which only mattered as a means of accessing online games, was an outlet for me as a child. There was a game that I'd wished to subscribe to with real world money, money that i did not have and was not permitted to have. Money, I concluded, that I should steal. The game consumed much of my free time. It was an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that I was invested in. I found community, friends, a world of fantasy that provided a form of imaginative ecstasy that enthralled me more than was healthy. With the subscription, I would unlock access to more worlds, cosmetic items, emotes, weapons, skills, and pets, and, to me, those virtual allowances were well worth the price tag.
    On the cusp of entering the credit card information beneath the soft glow of a dim computer monitor, I hesitated, paused, rather, full-stop on the precipice of unlocking more hours of content. My mind was wrestling with my desires in that moment as I sat still on the leather computer chair, the exhaust fan of the CPU increasing in volume upon recognition of its extended use. I didn't move for perhaps five minutes, but, trapped within my mind, it felt like hours. I'd settled on accepting that what I was about to do was a crime of passion, but I couldn't shake the 'crime' aspect of it.
    In the end, I followed my gut, slid the card back under the monitor and shut the computer down. I was ashamed of myself for what I considered, but I also hadn't planned on being caught not that I decided against going through with it. It was near midnight when I tiptoed across the carpeted floors of my room and eased into my twin-sized bed. I simply replace the card at the same time tomorrow, I told myself.
    The unfortunate part about being a child is that our attention spans the length of our pinky finger, and, as it happens, I was enough of an airhead to forget that I'd placed the contraband beneath the monitor in the first place. More than a week had passed until i returned home from school one afternoon to find my mother seated on the bed, wearing a rather solemn mask and stiff posture, turning over the contraband in her palm again and again. What ensued from there as my stomach sank into my ankles, was nothing more than anything I knew I should've felt when I took the card to start with. A tongue-lashing that voiced words of disappointment, confusion, belittlement, disgust, and any combination of them, then followed by a beating and an apology to my grandmother who only smiled in response.
    There was nothing else that happened in that room that brings me greater shame than the actions I took that day, and I'll regret it for as long as it remains a hazed memory. I stopped myself from an evil, and I learned a lesson, which encompasses the majority of what childhood is about, doesn't it? Maybe I'm not a saint, but I'm not so sure I'm akin to the devil either.