The Allure of Shiny Stars

The following is an essay I wrote my freshman year at Eastern Arizona College for English 101. The story the essay tells is autobiographical and true. Enjoy.

The Allure of Shiny Stars

When most grownups hear about a fourteen year old stealing, they want to know why. They’re looking for a rational cause-and effect explanation that almost justifies a person’s actions. We always need a scapegoat, a bad influence that can be blamed. Often we’ll hear about how it was those rotten television shows or Jimmy the crack head from down the block that corrupted our innocent youth. Crusty old fingers have been pointed at rock music and smutty sitcoms for deflowering juveniles, brainwashing their previously precious minds to do evil. These finger pointers are well intended, but they fail to realize that not everything has an explanation. Sometimes natural disasters strike and people commit crimes for no reason. It has been more than four years since my first experience with theft, and I still don’t have any regrets.

The story goes like this.

My freshman year in high school I took Algebra One with one of my favorite teachers, Mr. McQuown. Mr. McQuown was a short, bald, volleyball coach who always talked very rapidly. He continually wore the same outfit: dress shoes, a polo shirt and blue jeans, held up with a brown leather belt. The classroom was decorated with motivational quotes, math charts, and, mostly, pictures of people playing volleyball. It was a feel-good family type of class filled with interesting characters and good times. Once we all turned the lights off and left early, leaving behind one slumbering student. I fondly remember Robert Higginson going to the front of the classroom to tally up how many times Mr. MacQuown said, “thanks,” to the class’s delight. (Mr. McQuown said “thanks” all the time. “Could you get off the table? Thanks.” “Could you start paying attention? Thanks.” “Could you stop yakking? Thanks.”) Many good people attended that class, too. Kyle Williams, a great chum of mine, would keep the class laughing. A few girls would update us all on makeup application techniques. Sarah, the chain-smoking pregnant pessimist, kept everybody grounded, with her reliable insults and negative comments.

So with the good people, excellent teacher, enjoyable atmosphere, why did I end up looting the teacher’s desk? Refrain: ‘Cause I felt like it. Sometimes there are no reasons.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. There was a reason I wanted to have all those stickers- although it definitely wasn’t an important enough reason to justify theft, and it most certainly wasn’t an important enough reason to satisfy my parents and church leaders. But these stickers were no ordinary stickers. If they were ordinary, they wouldn’t have interested me, since I was never much of a sticker fan. These were small, shiny stars the teacher put on your homework assignments if you got a ten, equivalent to 100%. Back when I was a freshman, I was a hardworking A-student, who prided myself on high marks. So, as immature as it might sound, I wanted those stickers really bad! It meant that I was a good student and that, although I would never say it out loud, I was a little bit better than the students who didn’t get stars on their homework. I liked those stickers so much that I started saving them and sticking them on the inside pocket of my math folder. The stars started piling up like war medals, pinned on the uniform of a general. Each star represented the story of studying, calculating, thinking, writing, working, and, most importantly, the story of a perfect homework assignment.

The more stickers I acquired, the prouder I became. I stuck my chest out further, held my head higher, and laughed at the less-skilled students struggling with their simple binomials and polynomials. Now I was an Algebra One math whiz with the stickers to prove it! The teacher liked me, my peers liked me, and I think that even the math problems liked me. I was the King of Graphing Inequalities, the Eagle Scout of Equations, and the Five-Star General of Formulas. Everyone knew it. I’m surprised the local paper didn’t do a story on me. People looked at me strutting down the halls and said, “There goes the best Algebra One student that this town has ever seen.”

Through the stickers, I could show others and myself how good of a mathematician I was. What I lacked in sports skills and fashion I made up for in star stickers. Soon I began to gauge my own self-worth by the number of seals glittering from the inside pocket of my math folder. My self-esteem was a colossus on the outside, but inside it hinged on my daily dosage of those flashy blue medals. Every time I got less that a perfect ten, and therefore no star, I cried myself to sleep. Where did I go wrong? Was I getting too cocky? Was I slipping? Well, I did know one thing: I was the champion, and no little smart aleck pip-squeak underdog was going to rob me of my title! No one would even come close to the number of stars I had hoarded away in my secret stash!

Eventually, my burning obsession for those shiny badges surpassed my desire to do well on my homework. The stickers were primary, leaving the scores to be secondary. Those stars plagued me like an addiction, and I needed my fix. I lost interest in video games, arts, crafts, and hygiene. Like a heroin junkie, all I cared about was getting more. So I decided to steal.

Of course, I had always been taught otherwise. The eighth commandment is, “Thou shalt not steal.” But then again, they didn’t have shiny star stickers in the Old Testament days. If they did, who knows? – We might only have nine commandments.

The opportunity to carry out my dastardly scheme came during a chess club meeting, which was conveniently held in Mr. McQuown’s classroom at lunchtime. My chess-playing friends and I frequently met there to challenge each other to matches of the classic board game. One fateful lunchtime while playing chess, my mind drifted from strategically positioning my pieces to the stickers waiting for me in Mr McQuown’s desk. After my match was finished, I quietly walked up to the treasure chest, gingerly sneaking up to the top middle drawer, where the riches were hiding. My chess mates were consumed with the games they were playing, not knowing what cunning thoughts were running through my devious brain.

I was behind the desk. My armpits started trickling with sweat. Carefully, I opened the drawer. In awe, I stared at the mother lode that was revealed.

Just as I was about to snatch the prize, an angel appeared, floating slightly above my right shoulder.

“Stop, Telemoonfa!” shouted the angel. “Remember what you’ve been taught since you were a baby? Stealing is wrong. You shouldn’t do this!”

I stopped for a second. Would I regret this later? Just then a demon materialized, crouching on my left shoulder.

“Ah, come on, Telemoonfa. Don’t listen to that namby-pamby angel, steal the stickers! It’s not like you’re stealing a TV or anything. I mean, come on, man, these are just a few stickers. You know you want them,” the demon said.

The angel jabbered on and on about sin and punishment, but I stopped listening. I grabbed the stickers, stuck them in my pocket, and rapidly fled from the scene of the crime. The deed was done.

That night, with my bedroom door locked and the shades drawn, I sat hunched over my newly acquired stickers and my math folder. I systematically removed each star from the sheet and criminally placed them on the inside pocket, camouflaging them with the legitimate stickers. With each passing placement, I cackled harder. The mad scientist had created his monster with stolen parts.

Now this is the part where I’m supposed to say that I felt bad, confessed, apologized, and returned the stickers to their rightful owner. I’m supposed to tell the audience that I learned my lesson and that I will never do it again. Then I’m supposed to offer everyone a moral, a plea, begging readers to shun the road of sin because it only leads to misery and punishment. That’s what any decent law-abiding, God-fearing writer would do.

But the fact of the matter is that I was never caught, and therefore, never reprimanded. Was it wrong? Was it bad? Would my mother have shaken her finger at me if she had known? Technically, yes, but none of that really mattered to me at the time. And honestly, it still doesn’t matter to me. I recognize that my craving for those sparkling little symbols of success overshadowed my sense of right and wrong, but I don’t regret doing it. Call me misguided or call me a heathen, but when I stole those stickers I got a thick, wet taste of the same feeling that drives convicts to rob and assault, and I think I liked it.