Pig Theft

On a weekly basis, I visit my mom at her assisted living facility. I always take her out to do something, but she’s ninety-five years old, with a touch of dementia, and there’s not a lot she can do. We’ve gone to the aquarium and the botanical gardens, but on both occasions, she looked bored and eventually said: “what are we doing here?”

Last week I tried the mall. I put her in a wheelchair and pushed her past the shops and windows, until finally, we came across something that really piqued her interest.

Near the food court, a young man was renting flying pigs. I’m not kidding. Each pig was coated with a pink fluffy fabric and had white wings printed on the sides. A smile was painted to their plastic pig faces. They were a little bigger than real pigs, so a child or an adult could straddle their backs, and each was equipped with an electric motor and a throttle, so for 40 bucks an hour, you could drive them around the mall until your heart’s content.

“My God!” my mom said when she saw the fleet of pigs. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Nobody else in the mall was paying attention, so the proprietor stepped up to make a deal.

“Would you like to give it a try, Ma’am?”

At this suggestion, my mother smiled like a restored lighthouse that had not been turned on for years. I winked at the young man and slipped him my credit card, and with a little effort we both got Mom on top of a pig, and soon, she was tooling around the mall at full throttle. I’d never seen her so happy. She was thrilled with her new found freedom and wide range of independent motion. I rode beside her on my own pig, and I guess we were a sight to behold, because people were taking pictures of us. Finally, a successful outing, I thought. However, we ran into trouble while passing J Crew. I stopped to look at the outfits on the mannequins, and when I looked for mom, she had disappeared. I began to panic. I put on my glasses and looked again and I soon spotted her at the far end of the mall. She was heading for the exit while leaning forward on her pig, as if this posture would increase her speed.

“God damn it!” I said, because I knew she was trying to steal her pig.

All my life she had been stealing stuff: salt and pepper shakers from restaurants, towels from hotels, but at this age, I never thought she would be so brazen.

I figured I could run faster than these pigs, so I dismounted, but my shoelace got caught in the footrest, and by the time I ran outside, mom had cleared the parking lot and was going steady on a sidewalk beside a busy thoroughfare. Some drivers pulled over to take pictures. I wondered if she might get away with the heist, but before long, two security guards from the mall showed up in an SUV and pulled before her. They had the pig-rental-guy in the back. All three of them were furious. They pointed their fingers at my mom and yelled, but eventually, I managed to calm them. The pig-guy decided not to press charges, but still, the talking-down deflated my Mom. She was silent as we drove back to Whispering Pines, and at one point, her upper lip quivered as though she would cry.

“Come on, Ma. Don’t let those mall cops upset you.”

“Oh, I don’t give a fuck about those fucks,” she said.

“So what’s the matter?”

“I-I wanted to keep my pig!”

“Be reasonable. What would you do with something like that?”

“I would keep it in my room,” she said.

At this point she lost it. She sobbed and hiccupped as tears rolled down her cheeks and my heart broke to see her this way. I resolved to buy a pig for her. I even found one online, but they’re really expensive, and for this reason, I plan to monetize my Medium account. If you would like to help, please make a donation.