Words for My Enjoyment

I’d Like To Take The Opportunity To Criticize Your Choice To Rob A Bank While Invisible

September 3rd, 2006

I wish your lack of forethought wasn’t so transparent.

See, while most people won’t spend the time going into the list of “things you should and shouldn’t be doing if you were invisible”, I will. And while most people won’t even waste their time debating the potentially-unrealistic situation of being invisible, I can. And while most people will simply accept your #1 choice of “robbing a bank” the minute invisibility affected you… I wholeheartedly refuse.

That’s because deciding to rob a bank the minute you’re invisible is the lamest decision since my next door neighbor decided to install timed-spotlights for his front lawn.

Whether or not invisibility is something you’re able to swing or not isn’t up for a debate here. I don’t care if you were subjected to gamma rays or you drank a potion or you happened to be sunning yourself on the deck of a yacht that happened to float through a magical mist. I don’t care if it happened accidentally or if it’s all in your head. I don’t care about any of those things because they’re moot points.

What I care about is your decision to rob a bank the minute you’re invisible.

Let’s just put all our cards on the table here. Being invisible is a pretty amazing talent. A pretty mind-altering skill. A super power, if I may be so bold. And the thing is, with such an incredible super power at your fingertips, you’ve got to gear up to do things with that power that are also just as incredible. Here’s a list of things you should immediately not decide to do as your “first act” upon becoming invisible:

• Go into the women’s bathroom.
• Listen in on the President.
• Scare your housemates by moving pots & pans.
• Run around with a sheet over your head, then rip it off the minute someone comes near you, thus scaring them when there’s nothing underneath the sheet.
• Push co-worker’s papers off their desks repeatedly.
• Drive your car.

And…

• Rob a bank.

Even worse than deciding to go after these ideas as referenced above is telling your friends these are your plans. It’s like someone who just realized they’ve got the power to fly going around telling their friends, “Hey, I’m going to go fly!” It’s like someone with the power of telekenesis (the ability to move things with their mind) telling their co-workers, “With my newfound power I am going to go make pencils float and water defy gravity in mid-air!” It’s like someone with the ability to read minds suddenly, um… reading minds.

If you have the power to be invisible, you gotta think outside the box my friend.

That’s why, when you approached me the other day and informed me that you had the ability to become invisible and that you were planning on robbing a bank, that I had that look of disdain on my face. Remember how you asked me what was wrong and I just said something like, “Oh, I have heartburn,” when in reality I was thinking about coming clean and giving you the true 411.

I’m sorry I didn’t come out and say it then, but I’m coming out and saying it now.

Invisibility is an amazing power. But you don’t want to go out and just BE invisible and do things that people expect you to do. You don’t want to be known as the Rich Little of invisible people (i.e., someone who uses their talents in a very safe atmosphere and never risks a thing). You want to be the Donald Trump of invisible people — constantly keeping people guessing and causing the media to continually wonder what atrosity of invisibility you’ll cart out next.

While I’m not currently invisible nor have I ever been invisible and while I don’t ever expect to become invisible… If I was invisible I wouldn’t rob a bank because most bank managers expect that if they see that bank vault opening up by itself or they feel a rush of wind brush past them as they open it themselves… it’s some invisible guy.

But have you ever heard of an invisible guy working out for free?

Think about that for a second. If you were in the gym and you were looking for an empty elliptical machine and you saw one but it was moving by itself and the heart monitor was registering a 150 bpm, what would you do?

Um, how about freak out?

What if you were going to the salad bar at your local Soup Plantation and as you went to spoon some of that lovely Thousand Island on your salad, the latel picked up and gave you a healthy serving of it then you felt a really painful punch in the lower abdomen?

Um, how about keep it to yourself while you freak out inside?

What would you do if you were laying in your bed at night and suddenly you heard a strange voice and that voice told you it was your own conscience (but it sounded lower because your conscience had a cold) and it told you that the first thing you needed to do tomorrow was to tell your boss off, blackmail him into giving you a promotion and then sleeping with your co-worker in one full swoop?

You’d probably forever worship your vocal conscience.

From traveling with your next door neighbor in the passenger seat and whispering hilarious phrases throughout the car trip to taking pieces of celery out of your neighbor’s fridge and leaving them in the toilet on a daily basis to laughing every time your best friend looked at himself in the mirror… these are creative and fun things to do if you were invisible.

But robbing a bank?

Besides the idea being simplistic, rote and seen a million times in mainstream entertainment properties (i.e. movies, tv, books) — robbing a bank is lame because you don’t need money if you’re invisible. What do you need money for? Buying a car? How about just stealing one while being invisible? What, you need cash to have dinner? How about just sneaking in a restaurant and snagging a plate off the countertop? What, you want money so that when you’re not invisible you can live the high life? How about just being invisible and living the high life that way?

See what I’m saying?

That’s why I’d like to take the opportunity today to criticize your choice to rob a bank while being invisible. That’s why I’d like you to fully understand where I’m coming from here. That’s why I chose to do it here, for all to see and benefit from.

Because if you’re invisible… No matter how unrealistic that development may seem… Robbing a bank is the last thing you’d want to do.

You get me?

Posted under Being Invisible, Posts Where I Take The Opportunity To Criticize. |