The Great Baby Gear Heist of 2012

(To be read in the slick-talking east coast criminal voice of your choosing)

We left real late at night, see, under cover of darkness...harder for people to see our plates. Packed light, would need the trunk space later for "the goods." Headed east on the Mass Pike, crossed into New York sometime around midnight. Started raining. Made it real hard to see since our wipers sucked. Hadn't needed them all winter. Harder to drive but harder to see our plates too, gotta cover your tracks, don't take no chances. We drove all night and through the next day. Laughed at a sign for Fangboner Road in Ohio.

Heh heh hee...Fangboner. C'mon, even us hardened criminals like a good laugh. Ok that's enough. Back to the caper. We thought about stopping to see some of our "associates" in Chicago, but we had bigger fish to fry. We pushed on and rolled in to my brother and Danita's place outside Minneapolis exactly 23.5 hours after we left Boston.

The next day we had Liz's mom do our taxes. When the great criminals go down, it's always for tax evasion. Ya gots to have a good tax person if you don't want to end up in the pokey, blind and syphilis-ridden.

That night we met up with some of the old gang at Town Hall Brewery to cool our heels a bit before the capering. The Schulz's came all the way up from Northfield, where they are more feared than Jesse James and his gang. The Neshes (who are planning their own baby heist), Reeses, Walkowiaks, Kovalas, Peiks, and Kerns showed up too. We had some laughs.

The loot grab began in earnest on Saturday. It's almost too easy, like taking candy from babies except for the candy is actually things babies use and you take it from other people and not actual babies and all's you have to do is have a pregnant lady show up somewhere, throw a few bucks worth of chicken chili in a crockpot, and everyone gives you tons of free stuff on their own free will and you don't have to "take" so much as "receive." Got it? Even people who can't show up for the free chili SEND gifts in the mail. My aunts Lori and Lois sent us an entire baby stroller and got not a single scoop of chili! There's a sucker born every minute, as the saying goes. The best part: I didn't have to do nothin'--I played some golf with some "associates" while Liz worked her magic.

Saturday Shower at Alli's

We pulled a second job that night at Amy and Andy's place. We haven't been on that softball team in 7 years and they STILL gave us a bunch of loot. We also got the most hilarious gag shower gift ever designed by Kristy Rolig. It's too hard to explain bu t it was "from" a couple we used to bowl against, Herb and Vicki. Herb killed a guy after 'Nam and was in the St. Peter hospital. The gift included Winstons, lighters, and defaced stuffed animals.

The final phase of the operation was on Sunday at a nondescript community room in a senior citizens condo. Might have been Liz's grandma. Not sayin' for sure so as not to implicate her. After bowling a few games, I showed up at the end to help load the loot into the getaway car...during which time we notices a little problem: there was no way we were going to get all the loot into our '78 Challenger (car year and model changed to protect the innocent). We stuffed everything we could into space bags so as not to transport air across state lines. We ended up having to return a bunch of stuff, get gift cards, and re-buy them once we got back to MA, which if you think about it is really like stealing gas. To really top things off, my brother, a legitimate businessman, gave us a free new set of wipers that "fell off a truck" at his legitimate business. And since no self-respecting caper wouldn't involve the transport of alcohol, we got some discounted wine and Surly from Vinifera Wines and Ales, along with a discounted bottle of scotch which I later sold to a co-worker. OK, now here's the best part...the thing that's really gonna put us in the criminal hall of fame along with Bonnie and Clyde and and the diaper astronaut: we grabbed three Diet Cokes for the drive home from my mom's place...you see where I'm going with this? That's right--street value in Massachusetts: 15 cents. yep, 3/5th of two bits, allllll profit.

Sunday Shower

In short, it's good to have family and friends...you know, to fleece.