Today's fortune: Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Today I opened perhaps the darkest and most visceral fortune yet. This shit just got real.
And for a fortune about criminals, I think it's a good opportunity to confess. I committed a crime recently. Time to get it off my chest. Time to face the music.
Jamie and I were grocery shopping a few weeks ago on a Saturday, the same day every single other person in Kansas City was shopping at that store. Apparently the air conditioner was broken. Oh, and the door alarm, which is supposed to ring when somebody goes through it with an unscanned item, was broken too, and it was chirping constantly. Ear-piercing. For some reason, Jamie and I chose to continue our shopping trip instead of returning on another day or visiting a grocery store down the street.
After waiting for several weeks in the checkout line, we walked toward the chirping door and started to walk out. Then I looked at Jamie and I said, "Oh, I forgot the bag of ice. You go on to the car and I'll get the ice." I casually walked to the ice machine and selected a bag, then followed Jamie outside.
Only we hadn't paid for a bag of ice.
I had intended to buy a bag. I forgot to tell the cashier. And I knew I hadn't paid for it when I grabbed the ice from the machine.
You could say this fortune is right. The dreadful "society" of the grocery store caused me to do something bad. I wanted to get the hell out of the place, and instead of going back to wait in the long lines to buy a bag of ice, I just shoplifted.
You could also say the "society" of my own personal shopping history caused me to steal the ice, to make up for the handful of times I'd paid for a bag of ice and forgotten to take it on the way out.
And that's true, but the second half of the fortune is true too. "The criminal commits it." The crime may have been served up on a silver platter. But I still chose to steal the ice. It doesn't matter that the item in question cost a dollar-fifty. The same ethics should apply to that as to an expensive necklace (Are you paying attention, Lohan?).
Societal driving forces or not, I don't feel good about it at all.
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