...with the most outrageous(ly stupid) shit. Heck, I'm fairly sure the statute of limitations has run out, so here goes:

At ~11-12, I was part of the Mob, the Mafia. Well, of our local gang of fourth- to sixth-grade habitual shoplifters, that is. (I think I'd had an earlier bout of the same, at ~6-8, but that was strictly solo. Didn't live in the same village then.) Most of the group were in it strictly for the candy (as had I been, in my larval phase), but I branched out to Bigger Stuff after a while... Which would become my downfall.

But, about those strategies. I think I can recall two, one just a slight refinement of the other, which worked surprisingly well for a surprisingly long time. I remember thinking "Damn, those adults who work at the store must really be rather stupid."

1: Shove something down a pocket, or the front of the waistband of your trousers. Never mind that it visibly sticks out. Then walk around a bit, and transfer it to the back of the waistband of your trousers, and make sure to pull down your sweater or shirt over it.

2: Do one or both of the above, then make a quick detour somewhere you're sure you won't be seen -- like around the end of the aisles furthest from the tills, where vigilant cashier Daga (Mom to two of my kid sisters' best friends) was looking ever more suspiciously -- and quickly transfer the loot to your boot (or sock, if wearing sneakers). Make sure to pull down your trouser leg over it.

As I'm sure you've figured out, this must have been before even the idea of high-mounted mirrors had made its way to rural Swedish supermarkets, not to talk about sci-fi stuff like CCTV.

Come to think of it, I may have misspoken above: Most of the gang (which consisted mainly of girls, as I recall it; that may have been a rather large part of why I was in it) were perhaps in it not just for the candy, but for the bragging rights, the feeling of having outwitted The Man. I don't know if it was to get bigger shots of this that I went on from candy (and the occasional superhero comic?) to "Bigger Stuff"; I suppose I like to imagine it being my superior intellectualism and culture: I went on to books. Well, to cheap paperback novels, that is -- that's what rural Swedish supermarkets of the day carried (and still carry, AFAICT).

And that's how I was confronted by the Notoriously Strict, imposingly middle-aged and bearded, shop manager: With a copy of John Carter och gudarna på Mars (the one with a big white four-armed gorilla towering over the eponymic hero against a dark blue background; the sky, I assume) tucked into my jeans, on my not-yet-fat-enough-to-let-it-disappear-into-the-folds-of-flesh belly and under a flimsy T-shirt that may or may not have been outgrown to the extent of not quite wanting to stay tucked-in. Momentary insanity, utter hubris, or a more-or-less-subconscious wish to get caught? Idunno, time may be gilding my memory, but I'm leaning towards the latter.

And it didn't get better from the shop in question -- the same one where Daga worked; not the only one in town, but one of two -- being the local Co-op. So I wasn't even sticking it to The Man, that Evil Capitalist, but taking the bread out of the mouth of my Fellow Proletarians. Sigh...