It's time once again for another installment of stupid stories. We begin with my favorite news story of the year. This one took place on February 4th in Birmingham, Alabama where two very polite teenage girls tried to rob a shoe store. The ill-fated attempt began when one of the girls handed a note to a worker that read, "I have a gun in my pants, give me all the money."
"I'm sorry to do this. You're so nice." She said while handing over the note.
"You came at a bad time," the worker responded. "I have a customer to wait on."
Amazingly, the girls offered to wait. At this point, the worker casually walked to the back of the store and turned on the store's silent alarm system. The worker then returned to the counter and managed to stall our brilliant criminals until the police arrived.
"They were real nice," police Lt. Roy Williams told the Associated Press.
"They probably haven't done this before."
Almost as good is the tale of the cross-dressing bank robber in Louisiana. Dressed as a woman, James Tamborella Jr. seemed to have the perfect disguise for his robbery. He made only one mistake. His holdup note was written on the back of a personal check. Alas, the teller remembered his name, and he was arrested about an hour and a half later.
Stating the Obvious Department: My ever-so-helpful cable company recorded this message on their voice mail system: "To end this call, you may hang up at any time." Gee, it's a good thing they told me, or else I might still be on the phone. I wonder if they held a focus group and decided that stupid people just weren't watching enough TV because they were still holding onto the phone waiting for their calls to end.
Stating the Obvious Part II: "Use shortest line." -- A message above tollbooths outside the Denver International Airport. (Submitted by Richard Guinn)
Part III: Mike Van Loo tells me that in Northern Michigan there are signs on the road which read, "Do not pass when opposing traffic is present."
Proof that alcohol does indeed kill brain cells: Back when Ohio's drinking age was 19, Steve Morgan worked at an amusement park just across the border from Michigan where the drinking age was 21. Worried that many Michigan teens would drink there and then drive home, park officials decided to make the drinking age 21 for the park.
And so Steve was serving beer one day when a young woman approached him and asked what Ohio's drinking age was. He answered that it was 19. Before he could finish, the girl quickly placed a Michigan driver's license down on the counter. He then said, "But in the park, it's 21." She smugly grabbed the license off the counter, searched through her purse, and plopped down yet another ID onto the counter. I think it may have been a very sober day for her.
My dear mother asking about my job: "So does your job have anything to do with that whole X2Y problem?" My father is, of course, much more knowledgeable about computers. Later in the week, he even managed to mention all the right letters when he said, "So I guess that's because of the whole K2Y problem, isn't it?" Well, at least, they are aware of the problem.
Summer Mondeau writes:
A friend of mine from San Francisco phoned a girl he had met in San Diego. "What time is it up there?" She asked. This long distance relationship was short-lived.
Finally, outside Detroit, Lee Williams recently filed a lawsuit against Eternal Tattoos seeking $25,000 in damages. It turns out that Lee needed plastic surgery after a tattoo artist accidentally inscribed the word "villian" instead of "villain" on his right forearm. According to the Detroit Free Press, "Williams' friends noticed the misspelling and made fun of him, prompting him to wear long-sleeve shirts." Eventually, he was forced to have plastic surgery which left a giant scar.
Before inscribing the tattoo, there was apparently a long debate about the correct spelling. One tattoo artists insisted that it was spelled "villian," and Lee eventually agreed. Apparently, no one ever thought to look it up in a dictionary.
Copyright 1999 by Joe Lavin
Joe Lavin's Humor Column is published every Tuesday at: http://joelavin.com
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