This story could alternately be titled “How I Acquired My Copy of ‘Jackass: The Movie’ on DVD.

At some point in my high school career me and my group of friends did something we called “Car Shopping”. We would roam around neighborhoods at 2 or three in the morning and look for cars that had been left unlocked. We would then proceed to “shop” around inside the cars for anything that we may have found that was valuable; and we found some valuable shit. Most notably a taser (the worst thing a group of high school boys could find).

So I stole a lot of shit when I was younger. Hell, I stole a golf cart one time (ironically my moped was stolen on the same night…thank you karma). I got a great rush out of it and found it mentally challenging, which was fun. By the way, it was never mentally challenging at an airport. I stole so much shit at airports it was unbelievable; the stores hire help that doesn’t give a shit and all the real security is focused on the safety of others, not thievery. Where I’m going with this is that I became a huge fan of car shopping, since in its own little way, it was like teaching the car owners a lesson: LOCK YOUR DOORS…

So I liked car shopping. I liked it so much that when I went on my perennial vacation to Hilton Head I just had to tell my slightly older cousin about it so that we could go; and that is what we did.

Now here is where the heart of the story lies. Me and my cousin went car shopping around our giant fucking neighborhood in HHI. We had some realllllly close calls with ‘the authorities’ on the island and even had a small time chase scene where we needed to run back to our house as security cars roamed the streets looking for us. Now that was exciting since we had to run by a lagoon in the dark of night to remain out of sight from security…a lagoon that had gators in it…But before we had our close call, we opened up a new white honda civic to see if there was anything good lying inside. I was rummaging around and found a copy of ‘Jackass: The Movie’. I was pumped, I had heard it was hilarious and was totally happy with the find. That’s when I saw what was laying under the dvd case though. It was a brand new Macbook. I know it was brand new, because that’s when they came out with the first really cool one (I hate Macs, but for the sake of the story, it was badass). My eyes lit up, I’m sure. I couldn’t possibly conceive the idea that someone would leave their car unlocked with an expensive laptop in it (and those macbooks when they first came out were not cheap). I showed my cousin and we flipped out, this was a goldmine! He reached to pick it up and I told him to wait a second. It struck me that while I enjoy stealing things, I usually do it because its exciting or I legitimately want something. And I also remembered that I like to car shop to teach people a lesson. I convinced my cousin that we should leave the laptop and not brutally fuck someone over, and then we left. I took the copy of Jackass and made it obvious that someone went through their car, leaving the laptop out on the open seat. Hopefully they learned their lesson.

I find this story really interesting. I loved stealing but didn’t really want to seriously ruin someone’s month. We took things of value, but never anything like a brand new laptop. I guess part of my conscience spoke up at the time. Since then I pretty much stopped stealing. I guess it just kinda woke me up a little bit. I relish the days though. It certainly was a rush…Now I just live vicariously through my roommate Sean who steal produce from Kroger’s by just leaving it in his cart and checking out at the U-Scan…awesome…

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