illustration by Bion Harrigan
True tales of generous bank robbers and teenage boys who never change their shoes.
Most men across what the syntax-splintering “writer” Sarah Palin has called “this great, great land of ours” undertake admirable efforts to better the world.
Then there are those whose behavior can only be called, alas, dubious. Out of desperation, despair, or drunkenness they do things no sane man would do, if “sane man” is not an oxymoron.
“Dudes in the News” will concern itself with both types of men.
We will dissect news stories to create a comprehensive portrait of the modern man (another oxymoron?) and, for the pure joy of it, to examine just how far the modern mainstream media (an alliterative oxymoron?) have risen or plummeted in their capacity to report the news clearly, concisely, and readably.
You are invited to send odd-news-story submissions that involve men, a group so emotionally and behaviorally impenetrable as to be opaque, a word that means “dense.”
To this little exercise in throwing pebbles from our glass house, then, we bid you welcome.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A man who robbed a bank here on May 3 interrupted his escape to hand a mother and her daughter each a $100 bill.
Moments earlier the man had displayed a gun, stashed in the waistband of his trousers, to a bank teller at the Huntington Bank, 622 High Street, Columbus (population 711,470).
The May 4 Columbus Dispatch reported that the man fled after receiving money from the teller. The newspaper did not, however, print the amount he collected, an appalling oversight for which it should be sternly rebuked by the proper authorities.
Coming upon the woman and the girl as he sprinted up the enchantingly named High Street, the thief dashed between them and dispensed the bills.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent with the charming name of Harry Trombitas told the Dispatch that the motives of the alleged robber, who is still at large, remain a mystery.
“We won’t know until we catch him what he was thinking,” Mr. Trombitas said. (Notwithstanding the FBI man’s optimism, it is not a cosmic given that the munificent thief will be captured. God helps those who help themselves—to others’ goods.)
The mother and daughter had traveled to Columbus from Cleveland to scrutinize Ohio State University, a school of interest to the college-bound young woman. Perhaps the bandit is psychic, and therefore knew this. It is likely, then, that his $200 handout was in fact a contribution to the young woman’s college fund.
Alas, the mother, whom Agent Trombitas declined to name, returned the money to the bank.
“She told me she had to set the right example for her daughter, so they had to tell police what occurred,” he said.
Agent Trombitas did not address the possibility that, owing to her peculiar sense of integrity, the mother had robbed her daughter’s college fund of two hundred dollars, a crime for which, in a just world, she would be mightily reprimanded.
Either way, in these challenging economic times it is reassuring to know that, out of empathy for cash-strapped civilians, criminals cheerfully share with them bits of their pilfered riches.
One hopes that if this robber is brought to trial, the judge will recognize his laudable kindheartedness and award him not a jail sentence but rather a medal of commendation.
He is a magnificent example to children—and to future college students and their thieving mothers—of the virtues of charity.
♦♦♦
LAND O’LAKES, Fla.– Showing remarkable persistence and, perhaps, an alarming desensitization to olfactory stimuli, a local high school senior named Ben Hedblom has worn the same pair of sneakers since his freshman year for a bet made with a teacher, the Associated Press reported on May 9.
In a galling omission, the AP failed to name Mr. Hedblom’s school, which is called, quite reasonably, Land O’Lakes High School. Really, one despairs. Is there any hope at all for the mainstream media and their news wires?
We will leave that question to the Columbia Journalism Review and turn our attention to a May 7 St. Petersburg Times report (link below), composed by staff writer Jeffrey S. Solochek, the lead of which is a model of clarity:
“Ben Hedblom’s tattered black sneakers flap when he walks, turning his white socks a little grayer with every step.”
Well, ick.
Mr. Solochek goes on:
“The toes of his size 11 feet stick out of the dilapidated cross trainers… Yet Hedblom still sports the shredded, treadless Nike Shox he first tied on as a Land O’Lakes High School freshman. A bet, after all, is a bet.”
Mr. Hedblom, now 17, made the freshman-year bet with his Spanish teacher. The man, named Adrian Antonini, left the school at the end of that year.
Mr. Solochek, an intrepid reporter, recently located Mr. Antonini, who said that though he did not recall making the bet, he might pay it off. He and Mr. Hedblom long ago agreed that the loser would shave his own head and eyebrows, a distressing tonsorial assault.
For his part, Mr. Hedblom said the shoe experiment shifted his views about how people perceive each other.
“I was just like every other high school kid,” he told the Times. “Every couple of months I would like to go buy new shoes. I like to look good. But something happened. It changed.”
Mr. Hedblom is to be congratulated on his doggedness. He is a man of great self-confidence whose feet, in order to fit the shoes during freshman year, evidently were size elevens when he was but 13 years old. That is a startling thought. But it means that from the earliest days of his adolescence Mr. Hedblom has left a large footprint upon the earth, literally as well as figuratively.
(A side note: It is unnerving to learn that high school students buy shoes every two months. Six pairs per year at, say, a $100 per pair, amounts to a sum we shall never fully know inasmuch as we are dreadful at math. But given the situation, it would seem sensible to establish an exchange program between criminals and high school students. Once a year a fleeing bank robber could thrust two $100 bills into a student’s hand. The robber would be immune from arrest for reducing the student’s yearly shoe cost to something-hundred dollars. The program would no doubt sweep this great, great land of ours, and would be a boon to students and parents if a bane to prison contractors.)
Have a news story you’d like Dave Ford to consider for Dudes in the News? Email the story link to him at [email protected].
