https://omaciel.github.io/tags/childhood/Recent content in Childhood on Og Maciel's JournalHugoen-usTue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://omaciel.github.io/posts/2025-12-02-confessions-of-a-teenage-emblem-thief/Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://omaciel.github.io/posts/2025-12-02-confessions-of-a-teenage-emblem-thief/<h1 id="confessions-of-a-teenage-emblem-thief">Confessions of a Teenage Emblem Thief</h1> <p><img src="https://omaciel.github.io/images/confessions-of-a-teenage-emblem-thief-image-1.heic" alt="">“The Big Score” by Og Maciel</p> <p>I was fourteen when I first heard about people who “harvested” car emblems for the thrill of it. Nobody in my small coastal town had even imagined such a thing—which, in my mind, meant I had the advantage of being the first to try. Over the next four or five months, I taught a handful of trusted friends the quiet finesse required to pry an emblem loose without leaving a scratch. I became something of a connoisseur, only going after the really special ones—novelty emblems, rare designs, or the irresistible shield-shaped badge on the Ford Del Rey Ghia. I could never have too many of those.</p>