Hahaha...I love threads like this!
When I was a Navy Brat living in Yokosuka, Japan, I used to go down to the little commissary they had within the walls of the base hospital, which were perhaps 8-9 feet high and made of concrete. I was maybe eight or nine at the time.
Every day I would go in and steal a candy bar or something like that. One day after I put a candy bar in my pocket and turned to walk out, the Japanese guy who ran the store was standing in front of me. "Give me the candy bar in your pocket" he said. I mumbled something about not having a candy bar, and he interrupted me: "I watch you every day. You come in here every day and steal something. I have had enough. I am calling the Shore Patrol."
He grabbed me by my shirt, and hustled me into tiny office at the back of the store. As he shoved me through the door, he steered me into a little stool in a corner. He pushed me onto the stool, stood in front of me, and picked up the phone and began dialing, the black military issue phone making that funny clicking nose that rotary dials of that day made.
I grabbed the phone out of his hand and hung it up.
I was desperate. I had been really, REALLY stupid, and arrogant to boot. Now, I was screwed. My dad was in charge of base security at the time. I could not in a million years imagine what I had in store for me if they marched me in front of my Dad. I had to find a way out of this.
He picked the phone up again, and began dialing with that same hand while pushing me onto the stool with the other hand.
I bolted between his legs. No kidding. I really, honest to goodness did.
As I did, he knocked my USMC fatigue cap, which was my prized possession. He also knocked off my battered BCD glasses. But I ran anyway.
I ran all the way home, went into my room and cowered below the window, peeking out and expecting to see the Shore Patrol coming up the street.
Well, they never came. I told my mom I fell off of some rocks near the ocean and lost my glasses. She let out an exasperated sigh. Glasses again. I broke so many glasses and had them constantly taped together that my suffering parents refused to buy me another pair one time. I had been running like hell, and my glasses flew off of my face and landed in the sidewalk directly in front of me...glasses facing down, unfolded ear pieces point straight up in parallel. My flying foot planted squarely between the upraised ear pieces and I ground the lens of the right lens into the concrete. when I put them on, it was like looking through frosted glass. My parents said I was just going to have to wait to get a new pair.
I ended up smearing vegetable oil on the lens, and I could see, in a fashion, through the lens.
Anyway, I avoided that little commissary for about a year, giving it a wide berth, and being terrified anytime I had to go within fifty yards of the place, even if there was a eight foot high wall between it and me. As time went by, my memory became foggier, and eventually I forgot all about it.
Then, one day as I walked down the road directly on the other side of the little store with that big concrete wall shielding it from my view, I suddenly became aware there was a slow moving vehicle on the road right beside me keeping pace.
It was one of those dinky little three wheel vehicles the Japanese were so fond of, and to my horror, I saw that the driver was the Japanese guy who ran the store.
I gaped at him, and he seemed to me a human incarnation of a mamushi snake, and me, a defenseless, motionless white rat.
He hissed at me: "If you want your glasses back, you have to send your father down to get them." Then he pulled away and disappeared. My arms hung limply at my side, my mouth open.
I ran all the way home again. But I never told my parents, even years later. Funny. That guy did me a lot of good, and out of fear, scared me off of being a casual, habitual, shoplifter.