The apartment across the hall from where we’re staying in Minneapolis is undergoing extensive renovation – walls being moved, floors torn up and every day last week the noise from there was seismic, volcanic, like they were throwing pickup trucks into a giant grinder – and when I walked out of our place and saw a workman, I asked him how long this racket would continue and I used, as a modifier to “racket”, a word not seen in your family newspaper. Not yet, God help us, though I’ve heard it used by small children in New York attending schools named for saints. Kids grow up faster in New York.
“You sit in a traffic jam yelling at other drivers and where does it get you?”
I felt bad about my cursing. I still do. I am trying to give up anger. It’s poisonous and it has no effect other than to make the angerer feel bad and perhaps do something truly stupid. You sit in a traffic jam yelling at other drivers and where does it get you? You read about Kevin McCarthy online and in your fury you hurl your laptop out the window and how does this change anything? (I didn’t do that, only considered it.)
So, I am skipping the front page and enjoying reading the angry comments on the editorial page, and the obits and stories about minor crime. From this, I learn that 1) Americans aren’t adept at cutting people down, like whoever said of Endicott Peabody that he was the only Massachusetts politician to have four towns named for him – Peabody, Marblehead, Athol, and Hyannis. We tend to mutter. 2) Good obits are few and far between. They’re over-the-top laudatory and they leave out the delicious details. Minor rock musicians die and you read that they ‘had a profound effect on music at the time’ when what you want to know is exactly how many hotel rooms did they destroy. 3) There’s a great deal of outright stupidity in the world of crime.
Last week I read about a bearded man wearing a mask and dark glasses, gloves and tan sweater, carrying a handgun, who walked into a bank in St Paul and demanded money from three tellers in turn, his pistol aimed at them, and he followed them as they went to a safe for more. He wound up with $28,000, which he put into an Aldi grocery store bag and departed, unaware that a tracking device was included with the cash, which led police to find him a half mile away, on foot, carrying the Aldi bag with the money in it and also the mask and wearing the sunglasses. He claimed to have found the bag with the money in it and he declined to answer questions, but they found a library card with his name on it, which corresponded with his fingerprints on the bag. He also carried an unloaded Ruger handgun. He was bearded.
The reporter Nick Ferraro wrote the story beautifully, with all the fine details, the library card, the grocery bag, and also the perp saying to the tellers as he departed with the cash and tracker, “Have a nice day. Stay warm.” And his refusal to talk to police. You’re holding the Aldi bag with the dough in it and you fit the description and you walk away from the scene — were you planning to wait for a bus?
He is in jail now, with bail set at $500,000, charged with robbery and assault. A public defender will do her best to make a case for leniency — maybe he had a poor relationship with his father, maybe low self-esteem, poor reasoning skills, but how do you defend outright stupidity? The man is destroying the bank-robber mystique: John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde would be embarrassed to be associated with him.
If you’re considering larceny, my dear reader, stop and think this through. Cellphone towers can track your whereabouts and there are surveillance cameras everywhere. Twenty-eight grand is poor compensation for three years in prison. You can do much better by setting yourself up as an advocate for the math challenged and bringing a lawsuit against Apple and Microsoft for writing instruction manuals that make you feel unwelcome and marginalised. They are practising normaphobia and the letttter tt keeps repeattting on your laptop and itt’s causing you menttal disttress and you can’tt fix ittt. Ask for a million and hope for tttttttwo hundred grand. Have a nice day and keep warm.
Originally published by garrisonkeillor.com and reprinted here with permission.
