One night when I was about 27 or 28 years old I was in my friends car with another friend. They were both a few years younger than me. This was a few years before I got clean.
It was about 8:00 at night. I don’t know who brought it up but we decided to make a beer run at the local liquor store. In other words, walk in, grab some beer and run out without paying. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The liquor store was on a corner of a busy street; we had my friend who was driving park around the corner and wait for me and the other guy to come running back with the beer and we would jump in and make our getaway.
Well, me and Jim ( my friend) strolled into the liquor store innocently. We both picked up a 12-pack of beer, and headed towards the cash register, but instead of stopping to pay we just both ran out. The guy behind the counter yelled, “Hey, stop” but we went right past him. Well, when I ran outside my 12-pack ripped and all the cans of beer went rolling down the sidewalk, but I didn’t stop, I kept running. I vaguely saw my friend running near me as we both headed towards where the car was supposed to be parked. But he was gone!
Things were happening fast so I didn’t think, I just ran down the street by myself to get as far away from the liquor store and the clerk as I could. I lost sight of Jim and I headed down some back alleys. I vaguely heard some pedestrians yelling, “Hey stop” because I was running down a crowded street attracting attention. I ran about two blocks down a backstreet and I heard someone call my name. It was the driver, about 50 feet away. I ran up to his car and jumped in but Jim was nowhere in sight. We had a decision to make. Either look for Jim and risk getting busted or leave the area and save ourselves .We chose to leave.
These were my drug days: we all screwed each other over on a regular basis. So anyway we took off and headed for their home. We reached Marks (the driver) home which was a group home. We went inside and tried to calm down. About 45 minutes later, Jim showed up not looking too happy. They had caught him. The clerk had caught him and called the cops and the cops picked him up and took him to the station. But all they did was give him a ticket for petty theft. Anyway, that was kind of interesting, and Jim kept his mouth shut and didn’t rat on us. End of story.