My Nice New Jacket

Were you aware that the expression “beat the sh*t out of” really is not an exaggeration?

I grew up as the youngest of three boys.  All spaced pretty close together.  My oldest brother was a senior the year I was a freshman, and there was one in between.

Yep, we stayed close.  Mostly just under three feet.  The distance from our shoulder to the knuckles of our balled up fist was the maximum distance between us several times a day for most of the years of my life.  We pounded on each other in the mornings, in the evenings, and don’t think for a minute we skipped the afternoons.

I have two hands that are fairly like ham sized from all that work.  Ruined my intended profession it did.  I decided in the 6^th grade that I was going to be a dentist you see, but by the time I got into college, either one of my palms was substantially wider that 9 out of 10 people’s faces…so just had to move on to other professions.

Kind of drifted into retail hardware as a matter of fact.  Had grown up with a father who repaired everything, so I knew enough about plumbing, electrical, painting, gardening, automotive, and several other arenas to be dangerous.

Working in hardware was a joy to me; I filled shelves and solved problems, and worked my way up the ladder until I was managing a 10 million dollar store for a large retail hardware chain.

 

What does all this have to do with my opening line?  Well, I’m getting to it.

One day while I was reviewing some paperwork in the office, one of the assistant managers called me and told me she had spotted someone stealing.  I took that kind of thing pretty personal as retail theft accounts for billions annually and that was money that wasn’t available for me to pay my staff better wages/bonuses.  So, I hustled right down to stop the thief.

The assistant pointed out the man to me, he was wearing a nice new plush gray fleece jacket with a beautifully embroidered “Del Toro Brothers” in an arch across the back and his name on the front left pocket.  The Del Toro’s were a local street gang at the time.

I stopped him just after he passed through the registers and asked him if he had forgotten to pay for anything.  He didn’t say a word, just swung his right fist at my head and tried to break for the door.

As I said, I fought a lot as a kid, and so I took the right going in and wrapped my arm around his head which put him bent over and behind me.  It’s pretty hard to punch “uphill” from that position, so he was doing me no harm.  We struggled for a while until I swept my right leg back and around, sucking his feet out from under him and we went down on the concrete floor. 

I landed on his head.  Not the softest thing to land on, but since at the time I was a solid 230, a lot nicer for me than him I suspect.

Just about that time, I see a body come flying in from the side and land shoulder first in the thief’s stomach.  Turns out one of my regular customers saw the scuffle and figured since the assistant manager and all of the cashiers were female, he should lend me a hand.

That customer landing on the thief’s stomach not only took all the fight out of him, it completed my opening statement.

 

You might think the story ends here, but if so, you don’t know how I think.

My customer and I hauled the thief to the office and held him till the police arrived.  Got to tell you, the office needed a good airing out and a couple cans of air freshener after they were gone.

In all of the rush and gagging and confusion, when the police had left with our friend, I noticed that his Del Toro jacket got left behind.

I have never been accused of being subtle. 

Yep, for three months, everyday at noon, I put on that jacket and went down to a different place in town to eat lunch.  It was my own personal statement, to the Del Toro’s and every other criminal in town; “if you come and try to steal from me, it’s gonna cost you“.

 

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved