[Click on the images to see then one-by-one]Stealing a pack of...

[Click on the images to see then one-by-one]

Stealing a pack of gum is the kind of crime that a kid commits when he doesn’t know better.  It’s also the kind of crime a kid commits when he does know better.  For some, it’s the first and last crime committed. For others, it’s the start of an escalating spree.   

If an adult steals gum, it might be an impulsive act completely out of character for the perpetrator—because his life is too ordinary, or he wants to be noticed, or he wants to test moral boundaries that he never challenged before.   It could also be completely in character for some adults to steal gum all of the time; any adult who does this is surely a seriously bad person, capable of all kinds of atrocities, I suspect.  

Stealing gum is understood to be about as small a crime as you could possibly commit.  That means if you draw a line debarking criminal behavior from acceptable behavior, stealing gum is about as close to that line as you can get.  And yet no one would argue that it doesn’t belong on the crime side of line.  It’s as insignificant as a crime could be, and still everyone knows it’s wrong and that you shouldn’t do it.  Gum theft is what makes the line stark and distinct.  That’s fascinating to me.

The Bubble Gum Thief is about crime, and the way we deal with it, so it made sense to start with the theft of a pack of gum, and build from there.  That’s why the name was so important to me, even though almost any other name would sound more like the adult thriller that it is.