After doing some reading, I realized that some people do what are termed stupid things, but do not really receive credit for their basic ingenuity. For example, there was a gentleman in Great Britain who decided to rob a bank. He pulled a knife on the teller, told her his name and demanded that she put $800 in his account. He saw her push the alarm button, so he left and went down to another bank and did the same thing except that he only asked for $400 to be put in his account.
The Bobbies are pretty sharp in Britain so they managed to arrest him and he was immediately classified as stupid. I think that the whole situation needs to be better reviewed. Not one person took into account the creativity behind his actions. Obviously, by having a teller put the money into his account directly, he saved time and most importantly energy. If he had just taken the cash, he would have had to drive to his own bank using unnecessary gas that puts pollutants into the air. He would also have taken the time of the clerk at his bank when the latter really wanted to talk to his girlfriend thereby making him cranky and caused his bank to have to apologize to customers.
Some customers would not accept the apology and took their money out of the bank. They then caused more damage to the air as they drove to another bank where they overwhelmed more clerks causing more short tempers. Before you knew it, there were bank managers all over London who were firing or sending clerks home while they explained to their bosses why they were receiving complaints about their bank’s services. Obviously, all this could be avoided, if the media in reporting what had occurred had given the poor bank robber some credit for his forethought.
There have been cases like this throughout the civilized world. Just recently, there was a fellow out west (California) who slugged a liquor employee and cleaned out the place. He left no evidence that he had been the perpetrator. However, his friends wanted to know where he suddenly got all the dough he was spending. Well, he got tired of explaining what he had done in detail – even though he liked to brag. Consequently, he went to his friend, Ivan the tattooist and had the specific scene of his crime in great detail put on his chest.
Then when one of his nosy friends wanted to know what he had done, he would just point to his chest. That went well for about four years, and then he was arrested for purse snatching (apparently he had run out of money). When they took his mug photo, they saw the tattoo and put some dots together and he ended up in the barred confines for some time. Now some may consider him stupid, but on the other hand look at what his ingenuity did for the taxpayers. First the police did not have to have him sign a confession as he was carrying it around with him. There was no costly trial as he knew he was doomed and just plead guilty. Creativity always has an outlet.
I am certain you are wondering whether this leads to anything else. Well, The Blonde in the house and I had not been married for too long when we bought our first house. Shortly after, the kitchen sink had a leak. Now I had never fixed a thing around a house as my father never bothered to teach me, and I probably did not care. In any case, I determined to use my own ingenuity and fix it myself. I was aided and abetted by a “fix-it” book as I was pretty good with books.
I followed the directions carefully, loudly discussed several ancestors as I worked, and finally tightened everything up. I then called The Blonde in to see my masterpiece. I turned the water back on, and the faucet and the water flew up in the air drenching everything!
As you can probably fathom, my ingenuity has resulted in very little handyman chores for me!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com
