There are some crimes you aren’t aware you are committing, and we are told that ignorance of the law is no excuse, so most of us are probably criminals, technically at least. I’m hoping it’s technically in your case as well as mine.
An average person apparently breaks the law more than 40 times each year, and yet no one locks him up even once. Possibly because some offences are so trivial, like using a vacuum cleaner after 1pm on Sunday, so it might be a good idea to warn your au pair, and shame on you for making her work at weekends.
Think carefully, too, before you affix a postage stamp upside down, as you may still be committing treason in the eyes of the law. And ‘taking a circular saw from a vacant house’ is much more serious when the charge sheet contains the words ‘also a power converter.’
Many of us might have inadvertently pocketed the wrong change or forgotten to pay for a plastic bag at a self-service check-out — or even caused tree cuttings to fall into a neighbour’s garden (did you use a circular saw?) — but we could find ourselves in more serious trouble if we were even less careful.
Like the Californian man who stole electronic goods then tried to resell them to the shop’s owner (duh!) or a woman called Rebecca Taylor who tried to buy another woman’s child in a supermarket queue. She already had 2 other children with her, which makes you wonder which other stores she had shopped in that day.
Crimes that you and I — well, you — may have committed without realising, range from going fishing without a licence (how would the fish know?) to putting makeup on while driving, isn’t that called multi-tasking? And generally approved of? Some ‘crimes’ amount to little more than oversights, such as neglecting to inform the relevant authorities of a change of name or address. Crimes of omission, unless you are on the run from some less benevolent authority, the Fraud Squad, say. Whatever have you been up to?
Helping oneself to office stationery used to be considered almost a perk of various jobs, but nowadays when many companies are paper-free, only a letter writer would fall under suspicion of such a theft, especially if he stuck a stamp upside down on his envelope.
Some infringements of the law ought to go unpunished in view of the amusement they provide. A grandmother who defended herself from a machete-wielding clown by menacing him with a cut-throat razor sounds as if she had a few close shaves before. Equal first prize might be awarded to a self-proclaimed saint who threatened to flood a Florida beach with an army of turtles. Would there be any space for the turtles amongst the recumbent humans?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise once despondently told an alien being, “We have no law that fits your crime,” and something similar is probably true of beach infestation of turtles by a saint. What would his penance be? An Act of Contrition? Or 30 days cleaning up the beach? He’d need the patience of a saint for that.
