I like to try to pretend that I am a person who is able to keep things running smoothly, but once again, there are chinks in the facade.

Reader, I may have stolen some gas. And that benign looking station wagon up there is my getaway vehicle.

That’s right. I got out of the car (credit card in hand), pumped gas (credit card in hand), and drove away (credit card in hand). Like I’m either a complete dimwit or a hardened criminal. I guess I’ll have to go with dimwit, because I’d make a terrible criminal.

For one thing, gas stations obviously have cameras, and driving off without paying for gas would be a foolhardy way to begin a life of crime. The police called the house later that day.

For another thing, although I did not answer the initial police call, when I did talk to them I began the conversation this way, “I did it! It was an accident! I’m so sorry for the extra trouble I’ve caused you.” Clearly, any bandit worth her snuff would have had a better story ready.

Then when I immediately went back to pay for my stolen gas, I was chatting and joking with the nice lady at the cash register. No self-respecting criminal would be doing that. (She was really very nice about it and it says it does happen more often than you’d think.)

Finally, from the time I got the police call until about a day after I paid for the gas, my eye was twitching. I can only assume it was my guilty conscience. If I were better at being bad, there would be no guilty conscience, in my eye or anywhere else.

I’m always talking about how I’m exasperated by trying to keep all the balls in the air, and I never seem to sleep the way I used to, and I’m thinking about the next three things while trying to finish the task at hand. Well, I think this is the final repercussion. Everyone’s doing a million things at once, but apparently other people are a little better at the juggling than me.

From now on, I pledge to be more careful and to keep my act together. Since I’m pretty meticulous about obeying traffic laws and otherwise being an upstanding citizen, I hope this will be my only foray into the dark and seedy underworld of criminal life. Obviously, I’m just not cut out for it.