Last Monday, a teenaged boy robbed my town’s local bookstore (a disheveled arsenal of mass market books that I do not frequent.) According to the clerk, the suspect showed her a crowbar, demanded that she open the register and give him the money, and said “I’m sorry I have to do this.”
I am very curious as to why the teenager just HAD to rob the bookstore. What all-consuming need was he satisfying? And was he really sorry that the trajectory of his young life left him with no alternatives but to menacingly brandish a crowbar at some dumpy local bookstore employee?
He made off with $200, which struck me as an exorbinant amount of money for a sleepy bookstore to keep in the till on a Monday night, but then again, I have a background in convenience stores, where the first thing they teach you is that at some point, you probably will be threatened with a weapon, so you better keep less than $60 in your drawer at all times. Standard loss prevention, though it may piss off the guy who is menacing you with a blunt object.
The reluctant robber allegedly mingled around the store for 15 minutes before approaching the register with a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye,” the iconic novel for teenaged rebellion. Perhaps young man was trying to signal that, like Holden Caulfield, he was disaffected, disgruntled, alienated, isolated, directionless, and sarcastic, and therefore had no recourse but to express himself through precocious petty crime. “I’m sorry I have to do this. Goddamn money. I hope to hell I don’t get caught.”
