Confessions of an (unwitting) Shoplifter

It started innocently enough. One day when I was in the Children's Place and the kids were going crazy I left with a tie in the bottom of the shopping cart, one that I didn't know was there and didn't pay for. When I saw it I knew I couldn't put it back right away. As exhausted and harried as any mother of 14 month old twins would be who had just spent over two hours and two hundred dollars shopping the best sale she had ever been exposed to (huge clearance plus an employee-friend's discount) I could barely lift my hand to put the key in the ignition, let alone load the kids back into their strollers and walk all the way back to the store. In retrospect I really should have found a way. But I just felt I couldn't. I resolved to bring the tie back next time I was there. Little did I know that "next time" wound up being about two years later, and needlessly to say, I had forgotten all about the tie (which was too big and tucked away somewhere).
But a month after the Children's Place incident "we" shoplifted again, this time at Target. The little munchkins slipped something into the shopping cart and I didn't see when I put everything on the conveyor belt. It was a Cover girl foundation, SPF30, just my colour. I resolved to bring it back to Target, but since I go so rarely it wound up kicking around in my bathroom. One day I opened it and started using it.
If only I went back to these stores often it would be no problem, but running errands for me is inexplicably hard. I avoid them like the plague. I grocery shop every three weeks, I go to Target no more than a couple times a year. Once when we needed a bathtub toy container I just made one by drilling holes into the bottom of an empty plastic laundry box to avoid an errand. It was a turning point for me, and from then on whenever this little 'problem' would occur, this vulnerability created by too many kids, too many tasks, too little time, and a shopping cart with dark corners and shadowy basket edges, I'd make sure to return the shoplifted item immediately- in a clothing store I'd just chuck it on the first display shelf I found, at Target I brought it back to customer service. As hard as it was then, it was going to be impossible later.
But the bottle of foundation - I couldn't return that now. I'd broken the seal. And what if I did get questioned? What would I say? Would they believe it was unintentional or arrest me? I didn't have time or bandwidth to contemplate the dilemma between the doctors visits, therapy appointments, cerebral palsy hovering over us. I would have loved to correct the problem if I had the time and energy to do it. And then one day, the universe stepped in.
We were doing our bi-annual Target stop before hitting the library to make some returns. I had a few of the items in my purse, and, in helping me to load items from the cart to the conveyor belt, one of them had a barcode that got scanned even though it was clearly labeled as library material "High School Musical 2" (don't ask me why I had that dvd-it's too embarrassing ;) The total rang up around $16+tax. The cost of the foundation I had lifted plus interest.
I didn't find the blunder until later, but I faced the same problem. How was I going to find time to go back to the store and explain what had happened? Just as I was the unwilling benefactor of a pleasantry, I was now the unwilling benefactor of a penalty. Ah-ha! Justice! But miraculously, I didn't need to feel bad about paying for an empty barcode, I was spared the frustrations of the customer service line, because I owed them one.
Having two sets of twins through IVF has provided me with many ethical and moral dilemmas I never could have imagined, the least of which was shoplifting.
Now I better get that tie back to Children's Place before I get slapped with a heftiier late fee.