Hear the one about the 19-year-old girl in Atlanta from a nice middle-class family, with a college scholarship no less, who decided to become an exotic dancer? Wait: it gets worse. At her workplace, she met another girl, who had a boyfriend, who had a friend, who worked as a bank teller. So the two girls--our middle-class college scholarship winner/exotic dancer and her friend--decided to rob the bank where their friend-of-a-friend, the bank teller, worked. With the teller's cooperation, of course.
It's true, at least according to the Associated Press, which dubbed the pair the "Barbie Bandits" after they were caught on a surveillance tape wearing tight jeans and designer sunglasses, and giggling, as the teller turned over the cash. The robbery last February happened in Acworth, one of your basic big-city suburbs outside Atlanta. The girls got away with $11,000 and went straight to the mall, where they got highlights done. (Well, isn't that the first thing you'd do?) It's a wonder they ever pulled off the heist, since at first they couldn't find the right bank; they wound up at the wrong branch and had to call the teller to figure out how to get to the correct one. They've since been charged with felony theft and marijuana possession and are out on bond, which explains, I guess, why they were on "Good Morning America" this morning. (It sure is a good thing there was no other news happening.)
But here's the reason the story really grabbed me: the quote from mother of the Barbie Bandit, who wept as she recalled how she tried her best to instill solid values in her children by doing something special with them every day. "I hoped that would instill and pretty much guarantee me wonderful adults," she said. "But I guess there's no guarantee."
A sobering thought. Because all of us really, in our heart of hearts, believe that our kids will never commit such an act of Felony Dumbness--that it's just impossible, because after all we're giving them ballet lessons and math tutoring and trips to the natural history museum and Tae Kwon Do and....No, our kids will never pull a stunt like this. And it's true, that this particular crime was unusual in its spectacular stupidity. But still: you never know. Scientists now tell us that the human brain doesn't really finish its maturation process until a person is in his or her early 20s, and obviously with some people the maturation process takes longer than it does with others. My oldest daughter will be 11 this November; the teenage years loom.
It's gonna be a long decade.