[lit-ideas] Re: Didn't I tell you so?

Julie,

In 1974 I was a manager at the TGI Friday's in Memphis.  One lovely May morning 
I opened the door to the liquor room to do inventory and noticed in my 
peripheral vision an eight foot long pistol leveled at me.  I slammed the door 
and ran, coward that I am.  They too ran, I say 'they' because there were two 
perpetrators (that's what I learned to call them from talking to the cops -- 
perps for short, but they weren't short, they were ten feet tall at least).  
Thank God, I had unlocked the back door so they didn't have to come following 
me out the front with their 8 foot pistols ablazin'.  That was my first 
encounter with robbers.  A few years later I found myself too drunk to drive 
home from downtown and too broke to take a cab so I started walking.  About 
half-way to Midtown where I lived I was accosted by a man who unabashedly 
committed strong arm robbery against me.  Lawrence, no doubt will hold my 
little respect for not resisting him, but trust me, I couldn't have hit him if 
he'd stood perfectly still.  He told me to give him my money.  I laughed and 
said, "Do you think I'd be walking home at this hour if I had any money?"  He 
went through my pockets anyway and found a $10 bill in my shirt pocket.  
"Shit," I shouted, "I COULD have taken a cab home."  He started to walk off and 
I pleaded with him, "Don't take my keys, man, I don't want to sleep on the 
porch."  "Your keys are in your pocket," he said.  I patted my pocket.  "Oh, 
OK, thanks," I said.  He walked off shaking his head.

In the 1980's my now ex-wife and I were helping a dear friend, Sheila, move her 
certifiably insane mother to yet another apartment building.  We were moving at 
night because that was the only time everyone was free.  We were fairly 
accustomed to this by then, but not for the incident that night when a young 
guy approached my then wife as she stood along alongside the truck and asked 
for a light.  As she started to dig through her purse for some matches another 
guy grabbed her from behind.  Being a better fighter than moi, she struggled 
loose just as Sheila came out the door, saw what was happening and started 
screaming, the two guys started to run away and one shouted to the other, 
"Shoot, shoot."  He did, two or three times, but thank God, he missed.  Then 
Mayo, Sheila's husband, and I came sauntering out the door.  I think they both 
hated us from that day forward.

In the 1990's my daughter who was 17 at the time and three of her friends were 
going to a Catholic Youth Organization social at the Church of the Little 
Flower (I do still love Catholic Church names) when they were accosted in the 
parking lot by three guys with one gun which was held to my daughter's head as 
they demanded their purses.  Cowards like me, they yielded them up.  Thank god, 
they were content with that and fled.  I lectured my daughter sternly about 
going to Catholic Organization functions.

A few months later my son was walking home from high school when a car pulled 
up beside him and a guy got out with a gun and robbed him -- all of $3.   I've 
told these tales before, several years ago -- Franz probably remembers  : ).  
My point now is the same as it was then: in none of these instances would 
having a gun have made any difference -- unless, I guess, had we all been 
carrying it in our hand at the time.  Showdown time.  But that's like chopping 
off one of your hands.  Who would choose to go  through life one-handed?  

If I have to live in Memphis, and apparently I've decided I do, I refuse to 
live anywhere but Midtown, however I do wish the thieves would learn to go 
where the money is -- East Memphis, dumb asses, East Memphis, Germantown, 
Collierville.  Go East. young man, go East.  Rob those fuckers for a change.
 

Mike Geary
Memphis

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