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

What the hell happened to the song "Love Makes the World Go Round" and has  
the guy responsible been shot yet?
 
Julie Krueger

========Original  Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Didn't I tell you 
so?  Date: 5/30/06 11:16:46 P.M. Central Daylight Time  From: 
_atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    
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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