Although tempted, both by desire and necessity, I could never find the guts to steal anything. My sister on the other hand, well let’s just say she’s much more daring than I am. We should have seen it coming; from a very young age, Andrea was always the mischievous one and constantly found herself in sticky situations, literally. I say this because one day when she was six, Andrea thought it was a good idea to open up a bottle of glue and rub it in her hair during Art class in school. And who can forget when Andrea decided to cut her own hair–\u201cMom Stephanie is so annoying! She\u2019s always copying everything I do\u201d. This was her response when my mom questioned her about why she decided to go all Paul Mitchell on her hair. Now, I know some may say that’s just kids being kids, but we all know Andrea is rather unique. Then there was the time she convinced Daniela, my youngest sister, to stick her to the wall using duck tape because she saw the guys from Jackass do it and therefore wanted to try it; So much for the disclaimer no one cares to consider. <\/p>\n
At the young age of thirteen– you know that age where you have the entire world figured out and your parents can’t seem to bud out of your life, Andrea allowed her guilt along with peer pressure to force her into making one of the many mistakes of her teen years. I say one because just like any other kid, Andrea would continue on to making some pretty dumb decisions, but this one in particular was on another level. It was a usual Monday afternoon; I got home from another grueling day at school which was exceptionally grueling that day specifically because I took a Math test that I didn\u2019t necessarily study for. I did the usual skimming of my notes and I knew that it hadn\u2019t helped me in passing this test\u2014Maybe if I look through my notes right before the test, I\u2019ll be able to remember the information better; what was I thinking? That day, I looked forward to nothing more than to just get home and relax considering it was Friday evening, the prelude to the weekend which was my favorite days of the week. I\u2019m sure many others share the same excitement I have for the weekend.
\nThat night, dinner was being prepared by Daniela, whose personality is very similar to my own, in the sense that she always thinks twice, even three times about the decisions she makes. Some may think this is a sign of having no confidence, but I think of it as a preventative measure that avoids unnecessary trouble. \u201cGaby, you know what this girl in my class did, she broke the teacher\u2019s pencil on purpose because she said that the teacher mad her mad. She\u2019s so stupid.\u201d These were the kind of things Daniela would tell me when I asked her how her school day was. She was always observing people, very rarely saying much, but one must wonder what lay in this girl\u2019s thoughts. She would never find herself in some of the predicaments Andrea has been in. Daniela has always been the \u201cquiet one, little angel, sweetheart,\u201d and all the other cute and adorable pet names you would attach to a person who doesn\u2019t talk much and smiles all the time. Although Andrea and Daniela are only a year apart, their personalities are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and that makes for a lot of arguing and fighting in our house.<\/p>\n
As we prepped the table and listened to \u201cCaso Cerrado\u201d, the Spanish version of Judge Judy, which my mom cannot miss a single episode of, a phone call interrupted the commencement of our dinner. After being on the phone for about five minutes, my mom broke into tears and I couldn\u2019t help but to think what minor situation was causing her to cry again. See, my mom is what you would call a \u201ccrier\u201d. She will break out into full-blown tears over the most minimal situation such as over cooking pasta or loosing a game of Tetris. It turned out this time; the tears were legitimized due to the circumstance at hand. What snaps a teenager back to reality and forces her to reconsider some of her actions? The answer is to almost go to jail for stealing a cheap pair of earrings. This of course was the reasoning behind my mom\u2019s unstoppable crying and all the traumatic hoopla that followed.
\nAccording to Andrea, her best friend and her were at the mall doing some window shopping due to the fact that they were both thirteen and still \u201ctoo young\u201d to get a job and be able to afford things any other teenager would like to possess. The girls stumbled upon the tween jewelry store Claire\u2019s and decided to walk in. Among the rows of shiny jewelry, Melissa spotted the sliver pair of hoop earrings she had been eyeballing for weeks now. Andrea claimed that Melissa begged her to grab the pair of earrings for her. \u201cAndrea please, please, please just hold them for me. I really want them and Ricky loves hoop earrings.\u201d This was Melissa\u2019s reasoning behind wanting the earrings. To impress a boy, sounds clich\u00e9 but girls really do whatever it takes to impress their crushes. Seeing as how Melissa was her best friend and partner in crime, Andrea definitely didn\u2019t want to disappoint, so she decided to take the earrings and put them in her pocket. \u201cI was so nervous and I knew had a bad feeling about it but whatever they were already in my pocket. I couldn\u2019t do anything about it\u201d, Andrea told me. <\/p>\n
They roamed around the store trying to act natural, but there was no use because the security guard saw the whole thing go down. As the girls were making their way out of the store, the guard stopped them both and asked them to clear their pockets. Allegedly, the two of them stood there like a couple of statues. After asking a second time, the two of them snapped out of it and challenged the security guard, claiming they didn\u2019t have anything in their pockets. A couple of minutes of back and forth later, Andrea finally admitted to having the pair of sterling silver hoop earrings in her pocket. She gave it to the guard and both of them were escorted to a holding room in the basement of Queens Center Mall. The whole cab ride to the mall my mom was inconsolable, asking rhetorical questions such as \u201cWhat did I do to deserve this?\u201d or \u201cWhy me?\u201d I couldn\u2019t help but to giggle because although it was a serious situation, once again her reaction was way out of proportion. It was as if someone had died; she was crying so hard at one point, she made herself choke on her own saliva by accident. Daniela just sat next to me, observing my Mom and yet again, not giving any input on what was happening. \u201cAndrea is so stupid.\u201d That was her only reaction to the situation, which was actually her usual response when she notices that someone has done something she disapproves of. We arrived at the mall and ran over to customer service, explained our situation, and asked how to get to the holding room were the two criminals, Andrea and Melissa, were. This all sounds like a smooth process on paper, but the reality was that it was much more complicated than that. First of all, the customer service lady, who by the way was totally in the wrong profession because of her lack of patience which one would think is an essential quality to possess when in the business of helping customers, hence customer service, took what seemed like forever to understand what we wanted. \u201cUh mam, you gonna need to slow down and clearly tell me what you want from me.\u201d On the one hand, I could understand her confusion because my mom was still getting over her tears, which made it a little hard for anyone to understand her, but after the fifth time of explaining ourselves, it became evident that this woman was absolutely incompetent to her duties. <\/p>\n
Upon arriving to holding room, Andrea was unrecognizable. Her face was filled with tears and snot, which was a rare sight considering Andrea had a pretty tough demeanor and almost never cried. She had the look of embarrassment and shame all over her face, and I knew she was sorry even before opening her mouth and explaining herself. After hours of paperwork and a lot of uncomfortable silence waiting for paperwork to go through, we were all allowed to leave, including the two perps who cause this entire ordeal. It goes without saying that after a $150 fine and months of embarrassment from people on our block who had somehow found out about the shoplifting incident, Andrea never shoplifted again. Well, let me rephrase that, so far as we know she hasn\u2019t had sticky fingers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although tempted, both by desire and necessity, I could never find the guts to steal anything. My sister on the other hand, well let’s just say she’s much more daring than I am. We should have seen it coming; from a very young age, Andrea was always the mischievous one and constantly found herself in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":605,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions\/605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}