'Steal this wallet!' — Kyle Gardiner tries (and fails) to become a pickpocket victim in Europe

Kyle's mother Jenny wrote an entertaining piece that appears in today's Washington Post about what happened when her teenage son Kyle (above, at the top of the Eiffel Tower with his wallet sticking out of his pocket in plain view to entice a criminal) tried to prove the truth of what he'd read in a Rick Steves tour book about the ubiquity of pickpockets and the inevitability of having one's wallet pinched while traveling in Europe.

See — I can write a sentence longer than ten words.

But I digress.

Here's the Post story.

He Made Himself a Target, But Pickpockets Didn't Bite

On a Trip to Europe, A Social Experiment Concluded: People Are Pretty Good

My jaded teenage son learned the hard way the grim truth about humanity: People, it seems, are good.

Before a trip to Europe a few years back, Kyle had read ominous warnings in a Rick Steves tour book about the ubiquity of pickpockets and the inevitability of having one's wallet pinched. Jazzed as only an adolescent boy could be at the idea of being able to claim to have had the Total Experience of travel abroad, he bought a cheap wallet for the express purpose of losing it to a nimble-fingered thief. He even penned a "gotcha" note that he tucked inside, complete with his address, hoping the pickpocket would have a sense of humor (not to mention command of the English language) and return the wallet for future pilfering opportunities.

With that goal, Kyle was hepped about our trip. Forget the usual European folderol, England's crown jewels, the glorious works of the Renaissance, the site of the Berlin Wall: He was going to have a purloined pocketbook.

At first Kyle's strategy was to position the wallet barely peeking out from the upper edge of his back pocket: a little wink to the multitude of lurking pickpockets by whom we no doubt were surrounded. Come on, pull me out, it seemed to tease.

With no nibbles on that lure, the wink was replaced with a outright dare, a wallet protruding so far from the pocket it practically screamed, Hey! Steal me already!

Nothing.

Finally Kyle decided he had to broadcast his wallet's availability. "Uh, Mom, do I still have that hundred-euro in my wallet or did you take it?" he hollered as we walked amid the throng near the Spanish Steps.

Nada. Or I guess I should say niente.

Kyle traveled in five countries, attracting not a single specimen of the undesirable element.

It vexed him that try as he might, he was incapable of finding someone bad. Not a one. Well, maybe that icky little guy at the Trevi Fountain who sidled up to him and rumbled a creepy tiger purr of desire into his ear.

In fact, Kyle's tepid gratitude soon evolved into overt annoyance when one person after another would venture over to alert him to the vulnerability of his wallet. Thanks a lot, he would grumble with an air of resignation to the men, women, children and even sketchy-looking pickpocket types who offered their warnings to him.

He returned home unrobbed but undaunted.

On our most recent holiday overseas, Kyle gamely attempted to achieve lift-out yet again.

In a steamy and beyond-capacity Paris Metro, Kyle positioned himself near anyone who looked most auspiciously suspicious, to no avail.

The wallet also remained intact through four World Cup matches in Germany, including the pregame mad crush of revelers known as Fan Fest, in which we were pressed claustrophobically in a human hoagie with thousands of other celebrants.

The wallet endured overflowing subways, train stations (including that notorious pickpocket headquarters, the Termini in Rome), bus rides, packed gondolas en route to the Alps.

All in all, Kyle's wallet survived three different forays through major cities in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Poland and Italy (he'll add Vatican City, as technically it is its own country). Oh, and a Tyrolean town in Austria.

I felt comforted to find that perhaps the world is not such a scary place after all, and that most people go out of their way to be helpful, not hurtful. It may not make an exciting story to tell his friends, but Kyle's experiment had failed, thank goodness.

He didn't share that view.

"That Rick Steves is a dirty rotten liar," Kyle grumbled on the last day of the last trip.

All I could say was: "Cheer up, Kyle. There's always Manhattan!"

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