I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 13 or 14. Me and my friend got stoned and then decided to go get some Robitussin. We got out of the store and one of us pulled the stuff out of our waistband to put it in our pocket. We weren't in the store, but a suspicious manager who was keeping watch of us saw it and told us that if we paid for it and never came back to the store he would let it go.

We had enough money to buy it and would have if it weren't for the store's policy of selling cough syrup to minors, so we gladly took the chance to not get arrested and followed the guy back into the store. Once in the store, the guy locked the door and forced us to a corner while he called the cops.

"Am I really about to get a charge at 14 years old?" Was all I could think until I saw the look on my friend's face.

"Dude, do you still have the weed on you?"

I immediately panicked, not for myself, but for my friend who had two bags of weed and a pipe on him. I knew the answer to the whispered question was yes, and we began silently scheming ways to get out of this mess of a situation.

My friend told me to start pacing around in front of him, almost in an attention grabbing way. Well, the attention of the passerby was already on us, the manager made sure of that, but the attention needed to be on me, not my friend.

"Hey man, please just let us go!" I shouted, knowing that he wouldn't let us go, but it seemed a reasonable thing to say in an attempt to divert the attention from my friend, as he began hiding the drugs behind the aisles.

I saw the relief in his face and knew that the plan worked. I felt relieved myself, until I remembered the reason why we had to ditch the stuff in the first place.

The cops arrived and made their best effort to make us feel horrified, and they succeeded with flying colors. The manager seemed pretty satisfied with our state and once he heard the cops talk of their plans to charge us with felonies, began to feel more sympathetic to us. The manager told the cops to let us go, that he wasn't charging us. That was the most relieving feeling I've ever experienced, and though I was grounded for months afterwards, I definitely learned my lesson, and haven't shoplifted since.