It was 1990, and I had just turned 6 years old. My mother and I left for an errand in our banana yellow 1978 Ford Granada that was so long it was technically classified as a bus.

Before we exited the vehicle, mom turned around and delivered a monologue she had memorized and performed in this same Ream’s grocery store parking lot hundreds of times before.

“You will behave yourself in there,” it began. The middle part was mostly threats. She always stuck the landing with a firm reminder that she had a third eye on the back of her head and could see what I was doing at all times, a fable I believed for an embarrassing amount of my childhood.

If you ask my mother what it was like to raise me at that age, her eyes become vacant and you can almost hear the sounds of war echoing in her head. Then she’ll come to — and say something like, “We learned a lot of survival skills during those early years.”

We entered the grocery store, and I stayed near mom, not intending to get into any trouble that day. (I almost never intended trouble.) And I nearly made it through the shopping excursion without a single brush of lawlessness.

But then we approached the checkout counter, and that’s when I saw a container filled with individually wrapped yellow hard candies. Despite the Big Brother third-eye surveillance system, I chanced a swipe of one hard candy, quickly hiding the theft in my left pocket.

Mom, seemingly unaware, wrote a check and handed it to the cashier before picking up her groceries and leading me out of the store, relieved that we had made it without incident.

Now, I had planned to wait until I could retreat into the privacy of my own bedroom before retrieving the hard candy from my pocket, but as we began to exit the parking lot, I reasoned that since we were no longer in the store, I had gotten away with it, so there was no sense in waiting to enjoy the fruits of my larceny.

The moment my mother heard the crinkling of the wrapper, her head spun around 180 degrees as her foot connected with the brake.

The inquisition cut straight to the point.

“Where did you get that?”

Coming clean

I held the candy in my tiny open palm and informed her in a tone that implied I was quite proud of myself, “I stole it.”

Not 20 seconds later, mom led me back into the store, pinching the top of my ear to guide me, the way she had done on dozens of occasions to extricate me from a sacrament meeting I had just disrupted by shouting words that were forbidden in our home.

“We need to talk to the manager, please,” mom informed the same cashier who had helped us moments before. “My son has something he needs to tell him.”

A minute later, a man in a suit that smelled like Wonder Bread was summoned. Mom turned to me, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised, waiting for me to begin my confession.

“I stole this,” I informed the man, holding up the candy and waiting for my punishment.

The manager squinted at the candy, and then smiled, turning to my mother with a look on his face that suggested he thought he was about to deliver good news to her.

“Oh,” he began, shaking his head. “He didn’t steal that. We are giving them out for free today for Customer Appreciation Day.”

Not interested in technicalities and instead focused on extracting from me some mea culpa for my mens rea on a crime I had apparently not even committed, mom dragged me out of the store once more, sneering. “The manager told me to take you directly to the police station,” she informed me, as if I hadn’t been present for the prior conversation.

Dodging jail

Again, I was 6. And as we drove out of the parking lot, the fear of criminal repercussions nonetheless began to fill my mind as I wondered if I had misunderstood the exchange inside.

Moments later, we pulled into the parking lot of the police station. Mom put the Granada in park and turned around to address me, deep worry on her face. First, she sighed, glancing at the front door of the building and then back at me.

“OK,” she said. “I really don’t want you to have to go to jail because I would miss you so much.”

I nodded.

“So here’s what we’re going to do,” she said, pointing at the building and speaking to me as if we were a team. “You hide in the car while I go inside and see if I can talk them out of arresting you for stealing.”

Mom unbuckled her seat belt and exited the vehicle, taking a large breath to communicate her nerves to me. Just before she entered the building, presumably to stand in the breezeway for five or 10 minutes, she crossed her fingers and held them up so I could see them. Then she disappeared inside the station.

I sat in silence, waiting for her return, my stomach tied in knots. I turned the candy over in my hand (mom had forgotten to take it away from me). Eventually, she reappeared, walking briskly toward the car. She had a smile on her face, and she flashed me a quick and subtle thumbs-up, glancing side to side nervously, like she didn’t want anyone else to see it.

“Your mom did an amazing job in there,” she said as soon as she shut the car door. “I told them what happened. They said you had to go to jail for one year so I begged and begged them to let me take you home, and they said if you promise to never steal again … you won’t have to go to jail this time.”

Sighing with relief, I made the requested pledge and leaned over the driver’s seat to hug my mother. My advocate. My ride or die.

And I never stole again.

Note to readers • Eli McCann is an attorney, writer and podcaster in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his husband, child and their two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs. His new book is “We’re Thankful for the Moisture: A Gay Guy’s Guide to Mormon Faith, Family, and Fruit Preservation.“ This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.