The concept of catching a criminal in the act reminds me of those 'bait car' television shows that you see on 'truTV' every once and a while. The police officers will set up a vehicle to make it appear to be unattended with the keys left inside. Sometimes the door is even left open! Now if I was a criminal looking to perform an act such as stealing a car, I don't think that it would be that easy. In this short story a 'bait wallet' is created to entice the criminal to steal from this seventy year old man once again.
The very idea of stuffing the said wallet with expired coupons, losing lottery tickets and fortunes you pull out of fortune cookies gives a good description of how a 'bait wallet' such as this would look and feel. I imagine they gathered an older wallet just for the sake of making the situation appear to be more 'realistic.' The folds in the wallet have been worn due to age. It's stuffed almost too large to fit into this old man's back pocket. You can see the stress being put on the leather, since it has never been filled this full before. It's contents are peeking over the edges beckoning the curious to come and take a look. This is the kind of image that I was given by reading just the description itself in the story.
Towards the final paragraphs I began to feel slightly confused. I'm not quite sure why, but I will explain.
I loved the image created of the author's father as he carefully browses through the department store. He is fumbling around on purpose. Acting 'feeble' and over the top so he can draw attention to himself and the contents in his back pocket. It's a humorous scene to imagine. Now, when the elderly man reaches down to pick up what he has dropped from the store shelves, the thief takes action. To his dismay, by standers are quick to take action as well. This to me was sort of interesting because in my mind I envisioned the entire 'population' of the department store had completely enveloped this thief in their rage regarding his immoral actions. Finally the old man makes a run for it before the store clerk can even discover that the wallet was indeed a decoy. The story then cuts to the diabolical duo of father and son as they make their get away. THIS is where I became slightly confused. What were these two trying to get away from? I wasn't sure. At first I simply thought these two were just in a whirl of excitement that they themselves had caught this criminal red handed. And that was enough for them. I then begin to think...While the attention of everyone else was averted toward the thief in question, whose eyes were on the elderly man? Had he himself slipped a few store products into his now empty pockets and was able to make a quick get away because no one would suspect such a feeble old man for committing an act of thievery. He was successful in fooling everyone into believing that the man who made attempts to steal a wallet from a weak old man was the worse criminal than he was.
Perhaps the hero of our story is in fact the very criminal we are trying to capture.
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