Cause a Commotion
Last Saturday week just gone I was in a boarding queue (No.3; Non/Priority) at Terminal One, Dublin airport, with six friends waiting to get on a Ryanair plane. We were heading to the Basque country, a place I always enjoy visiting for its relaxed way of life, beautiful beaches, cheap vino……..
I had been having problems with the handle of my wheeled-suitcase. It would only extend out a couple of inches. I had wheeled it through the airport with my back hunched down. At the terminal’s boarding queue, a friend of mine, probably tired of looking at my neck on the walk to the terminal offered his help. He took hold of the handle, tightened his grip on it and gave a hard pull upwards resulting in part of the handle coming off in his hand and the steel rods inside the extending bars protruding out. He smiled at me as he handed back the handle, and funnily enough, I also found myself laughing at the result of my friend’s well-intentioned help as I binned it (handle & steel rods).
This incident reminded me of a story I read a while back in the Times, concerning others whose well-intentioned help had an unforeseen outcome.
The story began outside the Erste Bank in downtown Zagreb, Croatia, where a wheel-chair bound man was unable to open its main door (presume he could not reach the handle). A passer-by observing the wheel-chair bound man’s difficulty came over and opened the entrance door for him. A little while later the wheel-chair bound man left the Bank and asked a taxi-driver outside for a lift. The taxi-driver agreed to take him and lifted him into the front seat & his wheel-chair into the boot. He then drove him to the destination he wished to go.
What the passer-by & the taxi-driver were not aware of when they assisted the disabled man was they were aiding & abetting a robbery. After the passer-by had let the disabled man into the bank, he wheeled himself up to the counter & told the clerk he had a bomb & would detonate it unless they handed over 50,000 Kunas (€6520). He then bagged the money, wheeled himself out the front entrance and got a lift from the taxi-driver.
Now I’d be willing to wager that when the passer-by & the taxi-driver were told by the Croatian Police what the disabled man had done, they’d have smiled at the thought of their own actions.
I’d also have a sneaky one on, that the wheel-chair robber laughed all the way from the bank.
