When I was a kid, they used to teach you that the young George Washington cut down a cherry tree and, when asked if he'd done it, snitched on himself, saying, "I cannot tell a lie."

There was no standardized litmus testing in the 1700s, so that was good enough. Back then, you could be a little shaky about your belief in God and be a Founding Father. Heck, you could rape your slave women and be a Founding Father. It was a truth-telling, deist, broad-shouldered, raping kind of country in those days.

I went to the Wal-Mart a week or so ago to pick up a few things for my mother and, while I was in there, I picked up one of those small, industrially produced cherry pies. I was going to take the pie to my mother's, make a cup of coffee and then eat it while we chatted. The pie cost 88 cents.

Which I did not pay.

The cherry pie migrated under one of the bags full of my mother's stuff, and I never saw it as I scanned my items, fed cash into the machine and headed out into the parking lot.

The Wal-Mart I go to can be uninterestingly described as "urban." The place is full of obese women in pajama pants and guys in wife beater tank tops with "money over bitches" tattooed on their necks. The cashiers are so used to government benefit cards that, if you give them a $20 bill, they make you sign it on the back before they'll take it.

I'd come from work, so I was wearing khaki pants, a white dress shirt, a gray tweed sport coat, wingtip ankle boots and a dove gray fedora. Who's gonna stop me and ask me if I stole a cheap cherry pie?

It was a case of racial profiling gone wrong. I'm pushing 60, I'm pasty white, and I dress like it's 1932. I pay cash. I use a money clip. I can't be a thief, fahgawdssakes!

Of course, when I got to my truck and took the groceries out of the cart, I found the shy little pie and walked back into the Wal-Mart to pay. I did this because I went to Catholic school and nuns live in my head. The young girl tending the self-serve checkout area said it was "awright." I ran the pie over the scanner, put in a $1 bill, took my change and walked out.

But I got an idea.

I'm a newspaper reporter. When I retire, I'll be able to go to the bank, cash my monthly pension check, take it all in quarters and the resulting amount of change won't make my pockets bag in an unsightly way.

So, when I'm old and poor, I'm gonna steal stuff. Bologna. Crackers. Canned soup. Vodka. Hemorrhoid cream. Carrots.

All I have to do is buy a lot of new clothes, tweeds and dress shirts before I retire. If the clothes wear out before I do, I'm gonna get caught.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate, visit www.creators.com. The best of Dion's 2014 columns, "Marc Dion: Volume I" is available for Nook and Kindle.