A Tale of Surreptitious Theft...

Last night I was on my way to the Hockey game (yes the capital H was intentional) and I was sitting on the bus waiting to go to the arena. As I was waiting for the bus to leave I notice an unattended shopping bag on one of the seats at the bus terminal.

There were dozens of people that walked by and glanced at the bag casually but kept on walking to their destinations. Then I see a woman in her 40s walk towards the bag, looking around to see if anyone is watching her. She casually takes a seat next to the bag, lights a cigarette, and just sits there glancing inside the bag and trying to act non-nonchalant.

She notices me looking at her from inside the bus. She gets uncomfortable but she does move from her seat. I tried to get a picture but the glare off the bus window prevented me from getting anything usable. As she sat there, her facial expressions went from happiness at finding free loot, to fear of getting caught... she clearly looked torn about the whole thing. She kept looking at me as if it was some kind of show-down.

Finally the bus left and I was off to the game, I didn't see if she took the bag as the bus left, so I won't make any assumption. It was just funny watching someone trying to be so casual while at the same time being so nervous. I'm hoping she took the bag to lost and found or that the actual owner of the bag returned, but I doubt it because in this day and age it seems that even we adults are willing to apply the old "finders keepers" rule.

Muchacho Enfermo