Matt Dunn the Mentos Man: An Exploration into a Teenage Criminal

             In the fall of 1997, I was an eighth grader on a field trip in Washington DC.  Although this had its moments of fun, I felt somewhat out of place.  I was placed in a group with several boys who I didn’t know very well.  My good friend at the time, Michael Lipman, was supposed to be in my group, but he had backed out of the trip for some reason or another.  I was in a group with some boys that he had chosen. 

              The point of the trip was always to experience the history of the nation and bring it to life for students.  Most of that trip though I remember feeling somewhat out of place.  I was already an excellent history student, but as a young adolescent I found that my intellect would bring me no popularity.  During the trip I would often leave my group to hang out with two other boys, Tom Linden and David Powers, who I knew from our school band, and a new friendship with them was beginning to bloom.  We all had similar tastes in music, but in addition to that, I wanted to learn from them, as they seemed to have progressed earlier in their relationships with the opposite sex.  Dave had seemed to get quite a lot of attention from girls as he was also a star athlete, and Tom seemed to exude a confidence that I certainly did not have.  At the trip dance in the hotel Tom danced with a popular girl, Valerie Carlson in a provocative manner, and I was envious of that. 

              However, there was one thing that I noticed that I did get attention for:  I always carried Mentos with me.  The previous year, I had pursued a girl unsuccessfully, and I began to take stock of my appearance and of my breath.  I took to carrying these mints because of my insecurity of my breath all the time (although later I would find out that these mints because of their sugar content would only make your breath worse).  I sincerely believe that the sugar content in these mints was designed to be addictive because all throughout the trip people were asking me for them. 

              At the time of the trip, I was in a period of my life, when I was obsessed with gangster movies.  I watched every gangster movie I could get my hands on.  Then it hit me towards the end of the trip:  I should sell Mentos.  People were always asking me for them, I should sell them for a profit. 

 

              When I arrived home from Washington, I was invigorated by my new idea.  A supermarket, Waldbaums was within biking distance from my house, and I would buy 4 packs of Mentos for $2.00.  I would then sell them for .75 a pack giving me a net profit of $1.00 per 4 pack.  In retrospect, this was a fairly good profit margin.  I began buying Mentos and then dealing them out in school.  My new friends Dave and Tom became some of my first customers.  Others began to follow and I would sell individual packs of Mentos in the auditorium before school, in the locker room, and also in classes.  The profits I made went to typical teenage consumerism:  buying pizza and egg sandwiches.

              One day, I was visiting another friend who lived by the Waldbaums, Billy Loud.  Billy had made some friends from the next block who went to the neighboring school district, which had a tougher reputation than ours.  Getting interested in some teenage idiocy, we went to Waldbaums to buy lighter fluid.  Billy’s friend, Rob, who seemed to relish in being a bit of a juvenile delinquent, just stole the lighter fluid and I did the same, to fit in with the group.  It was then I had my second realization in recent weeks: stealing was fairly easy, and if I applied it to my Mentos business, I could make a great deal more profit.  Being someone who had recently become interested in gangster movies, this seemed like a win win. 

              It is here that the story divulges.  At first, I was just trying to make a little extra money and get noticed by people in school.  However, now I saw I chance to completely change my reputation.  I had always been known as an intelligent student, and in elementary school gained the moniker “Mr. History”.  In fact some of my classmates probably thought me quite nerdy and pretentious as I often sought to parade my knowledge around.  I had been called a teacher’s pet once recently, and that stuck with me.  It was then that I saw that Mentos could be my way out of that.  I would now be putting my intellect into use for selfish ends.  I would now embrace a bad boy persona, that would help me get the attention I so desired. 

              Gone was the nerdy “Mr. History” and born was the rebellious and enterprising Mentos Man.  I made it clear to students in school that I was stealing the Mentos, I wanted people to know.  Now that I was stealing the Mentos, I reduced the price to .50 per pack, which was cheaper than stores would sell individual packs.  Almost everything I took home was profit.  I developed a routine, I would come home from school and I would ride my bike to nearby stores and steal Mentos.  Most often I stole from Waldbaums, but I tried to space out my targets to other nearby stores. 

              It was then that I began to develop quite a following in school.  I learned that Mentos was truly addictive, and people desired it greatly.  I sold both the original Mentos and the new flavor the fruit Mentos.  Students began to seek me out to buy Mentos.  One particularly good customer, Michael Hauff, bought 4 packs a day.  As a true gangster in training, I began not to eat Mentos as much as I had, it cut into my profit margin.  I seemed to relish in the fact, that I was nurturing an addiction to Mentos in students around the school. 

              This was how it went for a while.  Slinging Mentos got me lots of attention from both students and staff at the school.  See my principal in junior high, Mr. Rizzo, ran a pretty tight ship in our school, and I firmly believe Rizzo would have been a good S.S. officer for the Nazis.  Students who got caught chewing gum, would end up in detention.  In retrospect I believe that this helped my business cause Mentos was eaten and didn’t end up on desks.  But the school had a strict policy against selling candy in school. 

              Now here was where I learned about how being a good student helped me avoid the rules for a while.  I routinely got caught selling Mentos in various places throughout the school.  But because I was a good student, the teachers never wrote me up.  I would just promise to stop selling in that location and I would set up shop somewhere else.  Like any good dealer you always have to be ready to be on the move. 

              One particularly good spot to sell was in my first period gym class.  The fiends would come out to buy in the locker room at the beginning of the day.  After one particularly good haul of stealing the previous day, I was carrying a lot of Mentos.  I came into the locker room, and just announced “Who wants Mentos?”.  No shit a line formed in front of me with kids waiving dollar bills.  Within a couple of minutes I sold out. 

              The gym teacher, Mr. Ward, had previously warned me about selling Mentos in the locker room.  He called out my name and said “Dunn you’re done!”  I went into his office, and he asked me to give him the rest of the Mentos that I had.  I told him that they had all be sold, and I didn’t have any left.  He said “You sold them all?  How much money did you make?”.  I made approximately $12 that day so I told him.  He then stopped for a second, almost wondering.  He had this look on his face, like damn this kid has got a good idea.  I’ll never forget that.  That split second look gave me a all the validation I needed to know that I had a good thing going.  He told me then that I he didn’t want to write me up cause I was one of his favorite students, but if he caught me again he would have to.  I agreed at stop selling in gym class, and I left his office feeling like an arrangement between two men had just occurred.  I held my head high that day I tell you.

              This whole operation lasted like this for around two months.  Every day there was Mentos to be sold, usual customers came out to spend their allowance money, and I really thought of myself as a big shot.  Besides just making spending money for here and there, people knew me. My reputation was growing.  However, I failed to learn the lessons from the gangster movies that I loved at the time.  It was only a matter of time until it all came crashing down. 

 

 

              People who commit crimes on a regular basis tend to get cocky.  That perfectly describes how I felt on the afternoon of February 13^th, 1998.  I was walking home with two other kids and they were asking me about my business.  I explained how I regularly stole candy from Waldbaums, and I asked them to come along with me on my regular heist.  This would prove to be my fatal mistake.  Stores might not notice one kid but three draws attention. 

              I took the candy into the bathroom like I usually did and put it in my pocket.  When I got out, a store manager was waiting for me.  He then said “where was the candy that you went into the bathroom with?”.  He said that him and the other managers had seen me around for a while.  Apparently I wasn’t as good as I thought .  I was done, my heart sank, I panicked and froze.  I always thought that if I got caught I would run, but I just stopped in my tracks.  He took me up the general manager’s office.  As I write this, I can still feel that horrible anxious feeling I experienced.  The moment is forever burned into my soul.  

              Eugene, the general manager explained that they had spotted me before and were on to me.  I had also noticed that in weeks past, the price of Mentos had risen, probably because of my constant stealing.  I gave a fake name and at first it seemed as though they would let me go.  However, then they spotted my wallet in my pocket which had my library card.  I was done.  He called my house and spoke to my dad to come pick me up.  I later learned that the store manager wanted to call the cops and have me arrested, but the other manager who was with him convinced him not to.  I can remember that awful look of disappointment on my father’s face when he came up the stairs to come get me.  He had gotten off work early that day and was still in his suit.  Here was this very respectable man coming to get his degenerate son.  I had been crying throughout, terrified of the consequences of my actions.  I went home, and my parents didn’t talk to me for a while, which probably was one of the worst nights of my young life.  

              The next day, my dad drove me to my hockey game.  He didn’t say anything to me in the car on the way there.  I worked my butt off in that game, and at one point my dad mouthed good job to me from the stands.  On the way home, he talked to me, talked about what might happen if I continued to go down that road.  I felt horrible, and I think he could see that.  I would never shoplift again after that day. 

              My Mentos business shut down after that.  I had garnered too much attention and began telling others in school how I got caught and how I was out of the game.  It was a good run I figured, and it was time to get back into school activities, and for the rest of the year I mostly was a model student. 

              So to end, what can I say about my time slinging Mentos.  Was it all bad?  The truth is, it was one of the greatest experiences of my young life.  It was necessary for me in retrospect.  I had all this rebellious energy inside of me, and I just poured it into this business of mine.  Was it the wrong thing to do?  Yeah, I should have just stuck to selling Mentos that I bought at the store.  Had I grown up in the days of Amazon.com, I probably could have just bought huge containers wholesale and sold them that way. 

              But for the first time in my life, I really felt noticed.  Perhaps I had cultivated too much of a nerdy personality in my younger days, that if I ever wanted to escape that I needed to break out in spectacular fashion as I did.  I gained confidence through the experience and didn’t feel invisible anymore.  I gained the confidence to become a singer in a band with my friends and former customers Tom and Dave.  From then on out I felt like a leader and not some nerdy loner. 

              So, make of this what you will.  Adolescent rebellion can be strong gateway into becoming an adult.  It also makes you question which kind of authority is necessary.  Yes, the store had the right to have authority over me, as I was consistently stealing their merchandise.  But the school?  Who were they to tell me that I didn’t have the right to sell candy?  Arbitrary rules in schools are unnecessary and should be challenged at all times. 

              I guess more than anything, this story is to say that developing confidence in one’s self can come from a variety of sources.  Stealing was certainly the wrong thing to do but it taught me lessons and I grew because of it.  I learned from this experience.  And every experience in life, is something we can learn from.