“No Good Deed…”©

A citizen with laryngitis tried to do a good deed last week.  It caused problems at first, but everything turned out all right.  As Bob Jensen was walking by theGood and Solvent Regional Bank of Letongaloosa he saw a backpack lying just outside the door. Bob figured that someone who had not wanted to take the backpack into9 the bank had forgotten to pick it up when he left.

          Bob had a bad case of laryngitis.  The best he could do was to write a note to the bank teller say8ing that someone had left the backpack outside.  The teller didn’t read the note.  Bob was wearing a mask (doesn’t everyone?). The teller assumed that Bob was there to rob the bank.

          She shoved a wad of marked bills into the backpack along with a dye-pack that wazs set to explode in a moment or two.

          A couple of hoodlums who had been casing the bank saw Bob leave with the backpack.  They figured it was full of cash.  The hoods stuck a gun in Bob’s ribs, grabbed the backpack, ran to their car, and screeched away.

          Following protocol, the teller pressed a “bank robber” button under her counter to alert the local police and county sheriff.  The authorities, shouting at each other over two-way radios, began to see the fleeing robbers.

          The two cars collided.  One car carried police officers, the other, deputy county sheriffs.  Both groups wanted to get credit for collaring the bank robbers. There has never been any love lost between the local police and the county sheriff’s deputies.

          A marvelous “Keystone Cops”  episode ensued as the authorities slugged it out and the robbers escaped.

          Meantime the dyepack exploded inside the backpack.  It painted the robbers and the inside of their car red.  The furious hoodlums turned their car into a mall parking lot, and leaving the cash behind, umped out and stuck a gun in the window of a car that had just parked.

          The driver was Bob. He had stopped at the mall on his way home from having done his civic duty at the bank.

          Bob pointed to his throat and mouthed, “I can’t talk.”

          “Shut up and drive,” said the robbers.

          “Where to?  Bob mouthed.

          “Toward the metropolis.  Take Highway 10, Merge onto 466.”

          Bob:  “Lots of traffic.”

          “Just drive!”

          The car sped along for a few miles, the3n sputtered, then sputtered again and rolled to a stop.  The engine died. Bob pointed to the guage.  The car was out of gas.

          “@#$%^&*()” said one robber.

          “(*&^%$#” said the other robber.

          “Get out and flag down a car,” the hoodlum in the front seat told the hoodlum in the back seat.

          “We’re painted red,” said the other.  No one will stop for us.”

          “Get out and flag down a car,” a robber told Bob.

          “I can’t talk!”  mouthed Bob.

          “Just do it.”

          Bob got out and started waving.  The eleventh car stopped.

          “Got car trouble, Buddy?”

Bob leaned into the driver’s window and mouthed, “Bank robbers!”