5th and 27

My bank got robbed on Tuesday. Tuesday was also my co-worker and current BFF Sofia's 27th birthday. Coincidence? Yes, actually, it was.

So, it was like 10:30 in the morning. All of my co-workers had arrived for the day; there's only five of us in the branch, and we all work on Tuesdays. I told my manager that I was going to step out for a few minutes, walk a couple of blocks down to the grocery store, and get a cake for our mini-birthday celebration. I put on my coat and headed out the door. About 10 minutes later, as I was agonizing in the bakery section over buttercream or whipped cream, pink or green, Sofia called me on my cell phone and said, "David, we just got robbed!" It was too much excitement to be believed, so I said, "What?" And she repeated herself, and I said, "Okay, I'll be right back." Then I realized that there wasn't anything that I could do about it, so I took another couple of minutes, decided on buttercream and pink, got her name put on the cake, paid, and headed back.

Waiting to cross the street, I counted four police cars with blue lights a flashin'. The place was swarming with cops, then upper bank management came, detectives arrived and the FBI was last on the scene. Apparently, just a minute or two after I left (was he watching the door?) this little guy came in with a paper bag and a note and told our other teller, Tuyet, to give him all her money. She was all alone at the moment, and the guy was really quiet, so no one else really noticed anything was up until he ran out the door.

So, the big bonus of getting robbed, besides being able to close the bank for a few hours and all the wildly atypical excitement that it brings, is that the bank buys you pizza for lunch. So our mini-birthday celebration turned into a raucous and crazy pizza, Diet Coke, and cake birthday/robbery extravaganza. I'm exaggerating grossly, of course, but it did make Sofia's 27th birthday and Tuyet's 5th robbery (!) into bigger events than they otherwise would have been seperatly.

I'm not going to lie - I'm disappointed that I missed the robbery. It would have been terribly exciting to have been there. And, tangentially, I wonder if it would have happened if I had been there. It is sexist but true that male bank employees are much less likely to be robbed, and even just the presence of a male employee decreases the likelihood of robbery.

Here is a link to the news story from the Tribune and WGN from the afternoon of the robbery. It is very inaccurate, though, as Tuyet says the picture isn't the same guy who robbed her, he never threatened harm to anyone and never even implied that he had a weapon. So that's about as inaccurate as you could get, I think. Also, the other three banks that are mentioned here are very, very far away from our bank, so it seems unlikely to me that they would all necessarily be related.

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Meanwhile, today my dear Liza arrives in her new home of Portland, Oregon after four days of driving and driving and marathon driving across the country. I hope there will be someone at her new home to help her unload her car. Today is my day off, so I'm feeling a little guilty about not being there to help. I'm so excited for her, for all the new friends and opportunities and connections and life that is waiting for her there in Portland.

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I wake up earlier now. I'm not sure why, I've even tried staying up later, but I'm still waking up around 6 every morning. I have all this craziness in my stomach then, too. Like stress and tension and worry and manic something or other.



Currently Listening to Mini-Playlist:
"Jump" by Madonna
"2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" by Lucinda Williams
"Out of the Woods" by Nickel Creek
"Human" by The Killers

Currently Drinking:
A scorching hot Hot Apple Blast at Caribou