The shocking thing is not that Going in Style is a pretty good movie about three old gents robbing a bank because they’d lost their pensions. The shock is that my friend and I talked over dinner and a drink about how our final years would be so much more comfortable if we robbed a bank.
First of all, there’s the fact that the take is all cash: no more credit cards, ATM machines, sullen tellers, or long lines — oh wait, we’d probably need to still have safety deposit boxes, only much larger, I’d hope. No more fussing with tax returns — standard deduction all the way, and pop it in the mail. To make up for what we owe the government, we’d make anonymous contributions to our favorite charities. Hephzibah and CASA, you’ll get part of my take.
It would be lovely to take care of my children’s mortgages and my grandchildren’s college tuitions, but it would be tricky not to disclose the source of the money. They might turn me in “for my own good.” Just for that, I may blow it all on Italian shoes.
One member of my senior band of sisters would probably buy a nice piece of local property and build the mother of all dog parks. Another would definitely move to Marfa, Texas and then follow the stars wherever they lead her.
Disguises pose a challenge; who wants to wear something that makes you look fat? Or older? Those rubber masks are out of the question with my asthma. Perhaps we could get someone at Hamburger Mary’s to do our makeup and wigs. But what about wearing glasses? Mine are pretty identifiable (see head shot). I noticed in the movie that none of the three men wore glasses and Morgan Freeman has serious cataracts. Hollywood.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, the lines at the tellers. Our generation is so polite, we’d probably get in line to rob the tellers. And I, for one, always seem to wind up in a line where someone is trying to take out a same-day mortgage. When we did get to the head of the line we could hand them all of our tote bags from the Oak Park Library, New York Times, CSO, Steppenwolf, Animal Care League, etc., and tell them to fill them with cash, and for God’s sake, throw away the rest. Not the cash, the bags. Someone has to get rid of them.
The getaway should be fairly simple. We could highjack one of the senior buses you see all over town. Our dog-loving driver has no problem cutting in and out of traffic and changing lanes. Our stargazer is getting a knee replacement, so she’ll be good to go. I’ll be fine if there are no stairs.
There are negatives, however. For me, perhaps the biggest one is how we would look dressed as drag queens wearing sensible walking shoes.
That and the fact that we’d have to have some way to get people to take us seriously, which requires guns, which we loathe, or a bomb threat. I wonder if we could just call in a bomb threat, stay in the bus outside, and have them bring all the cash out to the bus.
On second thought, it would really be best, and more gratifying, to rob a gun store — not the cash register, just the inventory. Then we’d hop on the getaway bus, head for the lake, dump all the guns in a waiting boat, and head to the middle of the lake where the weapons would rust in peace.
The final scene would show us with perfect makeup and hair styles, wind gently blowing across our smiling, knowing faces …
