by Bruce Reinhardt

So my ex wife gives me a call one Thursday afternoon, all upset and teary, blaming me for: our failed marriage, her crummy car, her tomato plants dying, her gray hair, AND the fact that our 12-year-old daughter had just been caught shoplifting.

“What was that last part?” I asked. “Gray hair!” she sobs. “No, no, no…the Erica shoplifting part,” I clarified, and then I pressed further with, “And when exactly did this happen?” Suddenly, I was experiencing flashbacks of being married to my ex, and how frustrating it always was whenever I tried to pin her down on REAL facts versus a bunch of unrelated “feeeeeeeeelings.”

“It just happened. Right now! And she’s still at the store, and she’s being held there until the Sheriff comes!” More crying. “Okay, okay, now are you going to tell me what store she’s at, and do you have a phone number, or the name of whoever is holding her there?” “What do you mean ‘O.K.’!?” she hurls. “If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened. If you hadn’t divorced me, Erica wouldn’t have been caught stealing!” Huh? More sobbing.

After several of these mindless exchanges, I finally extract the phone number of the department store where my criminal daughter is. I manage to get through to customer service, and am promptly put on hold as I’m being patched through to the security office. But fairly soon, on the other end of the line I hear, “Bruce, I just got here and Erica’s all right…she’s pretty shook up…I’ll wait for you.” “Gee, that’s pretty weird,” I thought, “this guy’s acting like he knows me.”

As I’m driving to the store, all these pictures pop into my head of my little Erica, handcuffed to a metal table, with a spotlight shining in her eyes. I envision tough-looking, uniformed cops, towering over her as they proceed with their interrogation that goes something like, “We know you’re the leader of this shoplifting ring that we’ve been having so much trouble with. You’re headed to the big house, little girl, and you’ll probably be doing five to ten for robbery.”

When I pulled into the parking lot at the mall, I noticed the Sheriff’s car sitting there, and so I parked right next to it. I go inside the store and ask the customer service lady where they keep the shoplifters. She calls security and they escort me to an office with nice overstuffed chairs, one of which has Erica in it. She definitely looked guilty and scared to death, but I still couldn’t see her having to get a mug shot taken. Then I turn and notice the Sheriff. And wouldn’t you know it’s Jim Wheeler, my ex brother-in-law! Of course, I just figured that he never was very fond of me, especially when I divorced his sister-in-law; and, I’m sure he got a one-sided version of what a scumbag I was.

“Hiya, Jim!” I blurted out. “What’s happened here, and what can I do to help Erica?”

Well, it turned out that Erica had been dared (i.e. suckered) by a couple of her classmates to steal some lipstick and a tank top. Naturally, my not-so-deviant daughter got caught red-handed, and the other two thieves ran without a thought of covering Erica’s back.

After a bit of serious briefing, on matters of the law and so forth, I was relieved to learn that Sheriff Jim didn’t really think I was a scumbag after all. In fact, he told me that he had actually wondered how the hell I had ever put up with his sister-in-law.

For Erica, the scare of getting caught was clearly enough to set her straight, and the store dropped all of the charges against her.

Thankfully, I never got another call from the law about more shoplifting, but I sure wish I could say that I never got another call from my ex. I swear, every time a gray hair sprang out of her head, she was going to sue me. But if you can believe it, her new husband actually thanked me, right after they were married, for divorcing such a lovely and kind lady so that now he could shower her with the love she truly deserved.

What a schmuck!