The gears are shaped like jagged O’s.

We lost one of our Spirograph wheels, the third one from the corner, the best size.  Spirograph engrossed me for hours at a time, and losing a wheel was a deep disappointment.

I must have been a dastardly child.  One day at my friend Amy’s house, we were playing with her Spirograph set, and I snagged her wheel in the size I lost.  When we were putting it away, she accused me and I smugly denied the theft.  She said that’s the same one that you’re missing.  You took it.  I said, no, it’s that other size, pointing to the size just below.  But she knew.  I was aware of the wheel poking into my stomach through my pants pocket.

I felt satisfied at home with my now complete Spirograph set.  But after that first flurry of play, one season perhaps, I don’t recall returning to Spirograph much.

I found an old Spirograph at a tag sale decades later, and brought it home for my kids.  It was a hit, but I was haunted by my theft of Amy’s wheel.  I thought of it every time I played.

Recently, on Facebook, Amy and I had a short exchange that led her to reminisce about playing Spirograph with me for hours.  I immediately private messaged her with my true confession.  She had no memory of it.  I wasn’t always that nice to Amy, but she doesn’t seem to remember that either.  The little crimes of childhood haunt only selectively.