I am quite possibly the most innocent person you will ever meet.
This is reinforced for me on a daily basis here at Penn, but never have I been so acutely aware of my innocence as I was the first day of my Criminology class. The professor asked us to complete a simple task -- list the 10 most deviant or illegal things we had ever done.
Upon hearing the assignment, my heart began to beat faster. I tensed up. All around me I could hear whispers of tales of drug use, underage smoking, rolling through stop signs. Lots of deviant and illegal behaviors ran through my head. "I don't drink. I've never sworn. I haven't stolen anything. I always turn into the nearest lane when making a left turn..."
Ultimately, I ended up with two items on my list. One was jaywalking. But the other, the other was truly bad. One time last year, I egged a car.
I've only recently begun to tell this story. People react with a mixture of shock and disbelief. Then they usually laugh. Few can picture me dressing up in all-black attire, going out in the middle of the night and devilishly pelting a car with hard-boiled eggs.
Yes, the eggs were hard-boiled. I didn't want to ruin the guy's paint job.
But in all fairness, he had tried his best to ruin my life. So if I got a little yolk on his windshield, I wasn't going to feel too bad about it. After deciding that egg-throwing would be therapeutic, I called my closest friend (she's Mormon), who had experience breaking the law. Twice, she anonymously made the police blotter at BYU-Idaho for "spotlighting" cars with people making out inside; surely with her storied criminal background, she would be the perfect accomplice to my mission.
We devised a game plan and set out for the store. Eggs weren't enough, I thought, so we settled on whipped cream as well, stocked up on both and continued on to my house to prepare.
Around this time, I began to have second thoughts. What if the police drive by and see me? What if the parking lot has security cameras? What if the victim catches me and turns me in?
After some reassurance, we set out for the target of attack. Though I was intensely nervous, I knew it would be worth it in the end. And it was. The 10 seconds I spent frantically launching eggs at that car were glorious. I got so excited, though, that when I went to spray the whipped cream, I pulled too hard and the nozzle broke off. My friend grabbed the can from me and threw it out the window.
"Oh my gosh! You just littered," I yelled. "Why'd you do that?"
"I'm sorry," she yelled back, as we sped away.
I then called my mom on the phone. "Ashley threw the whipped cream can out the window. Should we go back and pick it up?" I asked.
"Just come home," my mom said.
"But that's littering. Someone will have to pick the can up! My fingerprints are on it! What if the police find it and dust..."
"Just come home," my mom repeated.
And so went my foray into the criminal world. While I may have left my life of vandalism behind me, from time to time, I do still jaywalk.
