Here’s a fun story about thieves:
Penn Jillette is a famous magician. He was once sitting at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, holding court.
Among the people around him was a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins. Robbins had been working in Las Vegas casinos as a performance pickpocket — stealing wallets and watches for show, and then giving them back to their owners.
Penn rates pickpockets “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole” — and God knows stage hypnotists rank low.
Penn braced himself to be unimpressed, and he challenged Robbins to steal something.
But Robbins shrugged his shoulders. He shook his head. He doesn’t like to perform in front of other magicians, he said.
Jillette repeated his challenge.
But Robbins said no again. Penn was wearing just shorts and a sports shirt, and Robbins said this wouldn’t be much to work with.
“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”
Robbins smiled and said no one last time. Instead, he offered to perform a magic trick for Jillette.
By this time, a large audience had formed around the two.
Robbins told Jillette that the trick would involve tracing a circle on a piece of paper around the ring Jillette was wearing.
Jillette took off his ring. He put it down on the table on a piece of paper. He reached for a pen in his shirt pocket. He brought the pen down to the paper and clicked it to start writing.
Suddenly, his face went white. He looked up at Robbins.
“Fuck. You,” Jilllette said.
Robbins was there, standing with a small plastic cylinder between his fingers. It was the ink cartridge from Penn Jillette’s pen.
There are lots of possible morals from this story. But let me focus on just one particularly valuable one. It is this:
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