Felonies, Misdemeanors, and a Reuben Sandwich
You’re walking down the road on your way to a local pub. It’s a hot and sunny afternoon, unmarred by criminal activity. As you’re passing a construction site, a slight glint of light catches your attention. The sun is reflecting off keys that are dangling invitingly from the ignition of a forklift. It’s lunchtime, and there’s nobody around. An important decision needs to be made: should you continue trudging onward in the blazing sun, or should you commit an act of felony theft?
Not being a person prone to making rash decisions, you carefully weigh the pros and cons.
Pro: you’ve grown weary of walking, a conveyance such as a forklift would lessen your burden.
Con: jail sucks.
Pro: if the construction worker responsible for the forklift, didn’t want you to take it, would he have conveniently left the keys in the ignition?
Con: the construction worker responsible for the forklift, may be an ill-tempered brute of a man, keen on whomping thieves over the head with rebar.
Pro: you might be featured on an episode of America’s Dumbest Criminals, your favorite television show.
Con: you might be featured on an episode of America’s Dumbest Criminals, your friends’ favorite television show.
Pro: that thirty-pack of beer you’ve been carrying has gotten really heavy (did I mention you’re carrying a thirty-pack of beer?).
Con: handcuffs chafe and jail sucks.
Pro: with a forklift, you can easily transport a 30-pack of beer and a pallet of cinder blocks.
Con: you are an idiot and you will be caught.
If you’re anything like a current resident of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, you choose to commit felony theft.
With your newly acquired transportation, you quickly make your way to the local pub, where you order a Reuben sandwich. Felony theft not only stirs up hunger, but it also creates a craving for corned beef and sauerkraut.
You leave the forklift idling in the parking lot as you head into the pub, taking your thirty-pack with you, after all, you can’t leave things lying around, there are thieves about.
As you wait for your sandwich, you do your best to act casually. You make a concerted effort not to use the words fork or lift in any combination. You fail… multiple times.
Upon receiving your sandwich, you flee from the pub without paying, adhering to that age-old axiom: once you’ve stolen a forklift, you might as well steal a sandwich.
Now that you have successfully brought attention to your felony theft through an act of misdemeanor theft, you need to make a swift and stealthy getaway.
It would seem that forklifts were designed for the express purpose of not making a swift and stealthy getaway. Not that it matters: you don’t know how to put the forklift into reverse and you are easily caught.
You go to jail, handcuffs chafing…it sucks.
America’s Dumbest Criminals gets a giddy phone call from one of your friends.
Bystander: I’m not really sure why he stole a forklift, you can pretty much carry a sandwich in a paper sack. He’s probably just an idiot, there are a lot of idiots around here. Hell, you could transport an entire pallet of cinder blocks with a forklift.
Construction worker responsible for the forklift: He’s just lucky I didn’t find him; I would have whomped him over the head with rebar in a brutish manner.
Responding police officer: Yeah, it was close to the strangest thing I’ve seen. There was this one incident: this crazy little monkey got his hands on a bulldozer, smashed in a storefront, and stole a bunch of bananas. Then this guy in a big yellow hat showed up and started jumping up and down and screaming at the monkey. Every time the guy got within ten feet of the monkey, the monkey would just hurl a wad of feces at him. The guy in the yellow hat started screaming, “this is it, George, this is the end.” That sure was one curious little monkey. But yeah, this was the weirdest thing I’ve seen involving a human.