I’m really not, at all, a shoplifter. I just thought, for a short while, that I might be. Inadvertently, but still, maybe.

After using a particular brand of skin care and makeup for many, many years, I changed brands. I’d talked with my sister about what I was using now. I’d purchased the cleanser and moisturizer, and that sort of thing, but I’d not been able to find the makeup. I asked what she’d used and what color worked best for her, and I got helpful advice. I had looked for the makeup at a few stores, but without success. And I thought it might be a product that had to be ordered, instead of just picked up in the cosmetic aisle.

A few days ago, while doing shopping for arriving company, I turned the corner at my grocery store, and TA-DAH! There was a stocked supply of the brand I was searching for and a variety of hues of makeup. I spent several minutes looking at the bottles, comparing colors, putting bottles next to the inside of my wrist (which is how and where one is supposed to do that sort of thing). I finally chose the one I thought was best. The bottle was slender, and I was careful about where to put it in the basket, lest it roll around and possibly slip through the spaces of the cart and get lost.

“Maybe I should put it in my purse until I get to the checkout,” I thought. (Foreshadowing? Possibly.)

I did a bit more shopping, then waited, at a six-foot distance, for my turn at the checkout, and unloaded my groceries onto the conveyor belt. I helped bag up my groceries, plopped them back into the cart, and wheeled them out to my car. I unloaded the cart and drove back home. I’d made several stops during the morning and needed several trips into the house to empty the car. I was weary and only removed the cold and frozen stuff from the bags, to put away. Everything else could wait until later, to be stored on cabinet and pantry shelves.

The next morning, I cleaned and freshened up my face, ready to apply that brand-new makeup.  I went back to the kitchen and began digging in the bags that hadn’t yet been unloaded. No makeup.

“Nooooo,” I thought. Had I, after all, put the makeup in my purse to stay safe, and forgotten to remove it and have it scanned? I retrieved the receipt for my shopping trip. Oh, no. There was no makeup on the list.

“I’m going to have to go back to HEB and confess my problem and pay for it,” I thought. I would need to go back as soon as possible, in the event that there were cameras (and, surely, there are cameras). I dug, carefully and diligently, through my purse. Hmmmm. No makeup.

So, if I hadn’t put it in my purse, and I hadn’t taken it from the cart, then where was the makeup? Either I hadn’t noticed it in the cart and neglected to remove it, or it had actually done as I feared, and fallen out of the cart, after all. Whichever was the case, I was not a shoplifter, accidentally or purposefully.

But, I was going to need to go back to the store and get that makeup that I wanted to use. And, of course, there were a few things that I’d thought of that I should get, too.

And I object to folks who walk through the produce department and pull a few grapes from their stems and walk away, munching on them.