Hi, I see you’ve barricaded yourself inside the Credit Union with about 20 hostages. How can I get you to let a few of those hostages go? Just a few though, let’s not go crazy. If you let all of them out, you’ll lose your leverage, and I’ll have to go home before my kids have gone to bed.
I would much prefer for this to take a while so my kids are asleep when I get home. I don’t want them to be awake, on the couch, staring at me with the distinct, disappointed gaze of a child who had to eat their birthday dinner with their mom and her crossfit instructor Scott because their father’s fake mustache didn’t prevent the hostess at Olive Garden from recognizing him from the polaroid taped to the host stand labeled “banned for breadstick malfeasance.”
If you open the front door you’ll see I UberEats’d some burgers so that you don’t give up because of hunger. You’d be surprised how many people give up just because they are hungry. The guy dropping them off isn’t a cop, he’s a regular UberEats driver. His name is Kevin, he delivers stuff to me all the time when I’m up late at night thinking about how life would’ve been different if I hadn’t given up on my band, Mocha Death. We used to play acoustic nu-metal covers every Thursday down at Steffano’s Pizza from 6:30 until the manager noticed we were there.
Maybe you take the burgers and send one of the hostages back out with Kevin? You’ll still have 19 great hostages in there and my boss will think we’re making progress and won’t tear gas the place.
Nineteen is plenty of hostages. You’ll be fine. Or not, I don’t know. You ever think about just walking into the ocean and seeing if, when your head goes under, your instincts drive you to swim up or if your body just gives up? What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the hostages.
How many of the hostages are in relationships? 12? Do they seem like they’re happy? Can you send one of the happy ones out so I can talk to them and ask what that's like? I just want to know how it must feel to have a partner who loves you for you. Not some wife who is always correcting your grammar, but then gets all self-righteous and upset when you tell her she used the wrong “there.” She says stuff like “I was talking, how would you know which ‘there’ I used?” But you can tell it was the wrong one.
What if we just released all the hostages in relationships? If they are out too long their spouse might start cheating on them like I think my wife is cheating on me. She is all secretive. Whenever she answers the phone she always goes in the other room. Also, she recently moved in with her crossfit instructor Scott.
My kid’s call this Scott guy “Dad.” What’s worse, they call me “Scott” and that’s not even my name.
We’ve still got seven hostages right? Good, good.
What if we just disappeared man? You and me man. You ever think about that? Just faking your own death and starting over in some random Central European town? We should do that man. Let those last few people go and let’s just vanish dude. We’ll show up in some small German town. We could start a band. I play acoustic guitar. Do you know any Rammstein songs?
The people in that town won’t know that you’re a failed bank robber who went from having 20 hostages to having like seven in just a few minutes; and they won’t know that I’ve been banned from six different Denny’s locations for refusing to pay for a Moons Over My Hammy because they have a policy that kids eat free, thus, I should be credited $15 since I could be bringing my kids to eat at least $15 of free food if they weren’t at soccer with Dad, I mean Scott.
Woah, woah, woah. What are you doing? Stay right there. I mean there. See how you can tell?
Why are you coming out with your hands up? What do you mean I’m bumming you out? Goddamnit.