Creepy dude

So we went to a kid's birthday party this past weekend at Build a Bear. For those that don't know what Build a Bear is, it's a store in the mall where you can choose a shell of a stuffed animal you want to make, they will stuff it, and then there are ways to personalize your newly created animal.

So towards the end of the party when everyone has there animal (they give you a box to put your animal in and all the related paperwork that goes with it), the worker was printing out birth certificates for all of the kids animals. I was standing with my two boys near the computers where customers can print out their birth certificates for their animals. We were standing on the outer edge of party. The worker called my two kids names and they walked up to grab their birth certificates. When they came back, one of my son's box with his animal was gone. He asked what happened to it and I saw this dude who looked like he was in his early 50s walking with a box with a tiger in it (the boxes have holes in them so you can see inside and my son had built a tiger). I didn't actually see him pick it up so I wasn't going to accuse him but I said a little loudly and certainly loud enough for him to hear me if anyone had seen an extra box because we were missing one. A friend at the party also started asking around and between the two of us, there is no question that this guy would have heard us.

The guy sat down at a computer very close to us where I am assuming his wife and 20 some odd year old son were creating a birth certificate for an animal they had created. Now as I am asking if anyone has seen our missing box, I am keeping an eye out for this dude. I hear his wife say to him, "Oh, you have a box?" and he kind of nods to her. It was clear that she thought he had picked up an empty box to house their stuffed animal. I started looking too at their computer to see the kind of animal they had built and if it was possibly a tiger. Once it was clear that they had not built a tiger, I tapped the guy on his shoulder and asked him if the box that he kind of seemed to be hiding at his feet under the computer desk was his. He looked at me and said, "Oh, no." and then handed me the box. WTF, DUDE?

Seriously, the box was always near my son until he got up to get his birth certificate. It's not like it was on the other side of the store or was left unattended. My son was gone from the box for no more than 30 seconds. Once he picked it up and sat down at the computer with his family, he was never more than 10 feet away from me so he certainly could easily have heard me asking if anyone had seen a box. Also, there was a kid's party with several children and their parents right next to him so he had to have known that there would be several of these boxes with animals inside right near him. Why would you even think to pick up the box? If for some reason you picked up the box and thought it was misplaced, wouldn't you have returned it to a worker and said that you thought it was misplaced? Fine, you're a clepto but why would you steal a little kid's stuffed animal in the presence of your family? The more I think about it, the more upset I get and the more I should have just given the dude an open handed chop to the adam's apple. What a dick, man.

At least we got the tiger back and all is well in the end.