T Is For Theft

One day in sixth grade I took my friend’s football out to recess without asking him. At the time, I did not see anything wrong with it. We would play with it while we were outside and then I would put it back exactly where I found it. That is exactly what happened. Everything seemed okay until my teacher pulled me aside with my friend and told me the news. “Ben, what you did was unacceptable. You took (I won’t use actual names) Jimmy’s football without him knowing. I expect more from you than that. Seeing the look in Jimmy’s eyes completely changed my perspective on the situation. In his gaze I could see half anger and half disappointment. He seemed shocked that I would do such a thing. My heart immediately dropped. I thought of all the things that could have gone wrong and realized that I got a bit lucky. I would have been in a lot more trouble if something happened to the ball. Remorse and sorrow filled my body. I already knew that my parents were going to find out, and that was enough trouble to be in.
The punishment my teacher gave me, though it seems a bit silly now, turned my whole world upside down. I was not allowed to play football during recess for a whole week. When I was in elementary school, all I did at recess was play sports. Whether it was football, soccer, basketball, wall ball or dodgeball, I was always competing and having fun with my friends. I spent every recess the following week feeling like a prisoner. I sat along the wall of the school, watching my friends have fun playing the games I loved. I always heard them talking about how great so and so’s catch was, or how badly their team got beat. It pained me to not be able to join in on these conversations.

One situation hit me extremely hard. I was headed towards the wall one day, and one of my friends came up to me and said, “Hey Ben, why aren’t you playing today?” Embarrassed at the reason, I told him the story. His expression stayed blank, and he replied with an, “Oh, okay. See you later.” He turned and ran off to join the game. It pained me not only to watch, but have to explain what happened. It was a stupid decision that I did not think through. I regretted it every for the rest of the year, and I will even reflect back on it now and then and realize how much that changed me as a person.
Because of that incident, I know think more thoroughly about my decisions. I make sure to think about all the possible consequences, and whether the people in my life, parents, peers, and teachers, would think it was okay. I also learned to ask permission more often. Even today, I will ask permission for something that I know I can do instead of just assuming. My driver education teacher once said, “If you assume, it makes an ass out of u and me.” The second I heard him say that I immediately thought about sixth grade and the football incident. I assumed that taking the football was okay, and I definitely made an ass out of myself. That one little mistake shook up my whole world, but it changed me for the better. I am now a better person from this experience, and even though I am not happy I committed the act of theft, I am glad that I learned many important lessons from its repercussions.
About my letter:
I chose the letter T to represent Theft. The vertical part of the letter is black and white stripes because I felt like a prisoner after the crime I committed. The horizontal part is a football because my sin was stealing a football.