On the Robbing
of Banks
by D C White
I burst into
the lobby of the bank and ran to the teller’s
counter. “Righty-o!” I yelled,
“This is a stickup!”
There was a
pause.
“No,”
replied the teller, “It isn’t.”
This threw me
somewhat. “Yes it is,” I explained to
her, “Please don’t argue. You’re
breaking my concentration.”
The girl fixed
me with a stare which seemed to indicate
she’d had a long day. “Do you even know
how to rob a bank?” she asked.
I looked
around. Rather than cowering in fear the
customers and other staff were all watching me. Lovely,
I thought.
“Yes,”
I replied, “as a matter of fact I do, and
I’m doing it now. Please give me all the
money.”
“Or what?”
This time, I
paused. “What do you mean, ‘or
what’?”
The girl
sighed. “Look,” she explained, talking
slowly, “I have to have a reason to give you
the money. You can’t just walk in and demand
it.”
I scowled at
her, deflated. “Well what would you suggest
then?”
To her credit,
she gave the matter some thought. “Off the
top of my head, I should probably be in fear of
my life. Perhaps if you were physically
intimidating?”
I pulled
myself up to my full five foot, three inches.
“That’s
not helping,” she said, “Did you bring
a weapon or something?”
A weapon!
I struck my forehead with the heel of my hand.
Hurriedly I reached into my trouser pocket and
pulled out my gun. I was proud of my gun, which
I’d designed especially to get through
airport metal detectors. It was a gun in disguise.
I waved it
about so that everyone could get a good look.
Behind the counter the girl appeared resolutely
un-terrified. “That’s your weapon, is
it?” she sighed.
“That’s
right,” I said, giving her my best Jimmy
Cagney impersonation, “Now, hand over the
dough, toots.”
“That,”
she informed me, “Is a rubber duckie.”
Behind me,
someone giggled.
“It may
look like a rubber duck,” I said to the room
at large, “but it is in fact a .38 calibre
handgun.”
“Pull the
other one,” said an anonymous voice from the
back of the crowd, “it’s got bells on.”
“Go on,”
called another, “prove it.”
This put me in
a quandary. I could certainly prove it, but this
would empty the duck of its only bullet. Due to
its rubberised construction it took a while to
reload: about two hours. All in all, this
wasn’t going well. I decided to make a
dignified exit.
“Right,”
I said, “I’ll be off then.”
The jeers as I
exited the lobby did little to cheer me up, but
already my mind was made up. All I’d done, I
told myself, was bring the wrong weapon. I ran
back to the car, opened the boot, and pulled out
my semi-automatic loofah. This time, I
thought with a gleam in my eye, they
won’t be laughing so hard.
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