Stealing is stealing. And I don’t condone it. My concern is the erosion of our fine language. The language of Keats, Shakespeare, and Moe Howard. Shoplifting is a confusing phrase that connotes ransacking of the most feverish order. Images of people running through aisles grabbing everything that isn’t behind plexiglass. Seems to me like most of it takes place at or below eye level.
So where’s the lifting? Shoplifting should be uplifting – for the morale of every employee, told to stand down during a flash mob. They could use some good news. But what shoplifting that is more technical and literal. Most shops exist on the street level. They are exposed to the sidewalk, the elements, and any person who wants to walk through that revolving door.
It’s time it got a lift. Now the Brits call elevators lifts, but who wants to steal one of those? I’d like to see laundromats, bodegas, and delis move a little closer to heaven. Shoplifting could be a rallying cry for every establishment that’s wallowed for too long and too close to the gutter and all that entails. Why not contend with elevation, forcing would-be robbers into an actual uphill battle?
Would it make any safer for shop owners? Maybe. But it would make their views of the countryside nicer and the smells in the squalid summer months a bit more tolerable.
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