Did you know those anti-theft tags have ink in them?

[Rain Man]

I didn't. Am I the only one?

I bought a pair of running shoes last week - white, with silver and chartreuse stripes. Very nice.

I brought them home, and they sat in the closet for a week before I pulled them out to go for a jog. I removed the right one from the box, put it on, and then removed the left one out of the box. To my dismay, I discovered that it still had the anti-theft tag on it.

What a pain in the neck. I didn't want to drive all the way down to the shoe store, and on top of that, I didn't know where the receipt was. it didn't seem like a good idea to walk to a counter with a pair of shoes and no receipt and say, "Hey, these are mine. Would you please remove the anti-theft tag so I can take them?"

So I figured, hey, they're just plastic. I'm a tool-using hominid. If a pierced and tattooed teenage girl can figure out how to remove them, I can figure out how to bust it off.

I messed with it a little bit, and then decided to take it down to the basement where I keep my tool box. I was still wearing the right shoe, so I walked down the stairs, (pad) Clomp (pad) Clomp (pad) Clomp, and set the shoe on the clothes dryer. I got a couple of screwdrivers out of the tool box, found a little uneven spot in the seal of the tag, and started wedging.

The wedging went slow but well. I was able to slowly pull the two halves apart, and thought I was making good progress, when - BLORT - I busted an ink container inside it.

I look like a failed bank robber now. It's all over my hands, I've got a few drops on my face I can't get off, the brand new left shoe is stained all over, and it even dried on top of the clothes dryer and I can't get it off.

This is why I hate criminals. Criminals did this to me. In the old days, I would just go in, buy my shoes, and know that I could just lace them up and jog. Now I have to have a machine shop to get this thing off, and when I do, it ruins the shoe. We need bigger prisons in this country so that honest citizens don't get their shoes ruined by criminals.