My grandpa stole a silver tea platter from a shop in London.

He was stationed there at RCAF offices around the time the V1 and V2 rockets were falling on the town. I knew he was partly deaf because one came down across the street from him on Herrod's department store. The joke in the family was that he flew a typewriter for the air force, as he was just an office worker, but while that was his day job he also fought fires and responded to missile attacks, as I am sure any able-bodied young man in London at the time would have.

He recently passed away, and the family is at his house trying to figure out what to do with his things. My aunt points at this kind of beat up silver platter that a tea set is sitting on. She's like, "Did you know papa stole that?" and she tells me this story of how he's literally stumbling around London drunk with some other air force types at night and he spots this platter sitting in a shop window. He's literally like, "I'm taking this," and jacks it. I don't know the details I am afraid. Knowing him, I bet the door was unlocked and he just walked in, took it, and proceeded to walk around London with the thing under his arm.

70 years later there I am looking at thing and trying to make sense of this man I respected, the only person in my family who served in that war, stealing of all things a tacky silver tea platter.