Keep Your Hands Off Ruthie

My failure to figure out the motives of Money Mules made me a wreck. I asked myself over and over, Why do they always run instead of returning with the money? But there was no satisfactory answer, leaving me, frankly, crumpled and crying. When that happens, I'm a mess. I'm sparking and sizzling, twitching and babbling on my bed, close to destruction; I'm afraid to brush against anything lest I spontaneously combust.

I knew I needed help, but who was qualified for the job? I'm Super Brain, and if I couldn't figure it out, who could? Wracking my mind, I came up with this thought: Those who first taught me the deeper principles of people skills, psychology profs at the university! Maybe, if they put their heads together, their collective intelligence plus my own greater intelligence would give us the answer.

I should probably mention, those guys are shells of their former selves. They're bogged down from reading the same lectures since the early '60s, while I've cruised past them, making me, the student, their master in every way. It has to be a nasty feeling to watch me run laps around them as though they're standing still, but that's what you get if you lose the hold on life and scholarship you once held dear.

Then we must add sex. We all know the go-to rejuvenator for old guys, at least in their fantasies, is sex. You're old and decrepit, like my professors, and you try to prove your abiding mastery of life by sex. The main reason being, the equipment's right there in easy reach. Surely, that guy or that lady feels as I do ... We shall rise together from the ashes! they're thinking. Which, to the rest of us still holding our mental clarity, is obviously vanity.

So, anyway, I got my esteemed profs together, and threw in one fatal juicy apple of temptation by which to test them -- the cashier from the union cafeteria, Ruthie. Were I to see them entirely resolved to scholarship and not thinking of a roll in the hay to prove their scholarly manhood, then and only then could I trust them with the Money Mule question. (This is preliminary stuff. The sex stuff plows the field before we see the harvest, the "meat of the goodie," the answers I really care about.)

There they were, then, gathered in the seminar room. And each of them had his damned eyes on Ruthie, seated next to me, exquisitely dolled up! Perverts! (I would've done her myself, had my brain been just a little looser and slightly more unreliable.)

Of course I first had to set the parameters of our study and call them unto the quest: Why, when you present a Money Mule a sum of money, say $100,000, and send him forth, does he always run and never return?

They looked like they were ready to venture a few good guesses to the question. Before we could dive in, however, I wanted to inform them that I had strict ground rules:

1) Do not approach or in any way come on to Ruthie. Keep your grubby hands off Ruthie.
2) Abide by all the best legal and academic scruples. Give me your best work.
3) A Number 2 pencil is preferable to any and all other numbers. If it ain't Number 2, it's crap.

And that's it. The professors raced forth to find their pencils and bone up on the best legal and academic scruples.

As for me, I fell to my knees where I stood, a shaft of light streaming through the skylight putting me in a very dramatic limelight, and asked the Lord: "Bless them, dear God, if they deserve blessing. But if they're not ready for this important task, please reveal that as well. Thou knowest what I mean."

Of course I referred to Ruthie. She really does have a fantastic allure when she's out of cafeteria scrubs and exquisitely dolled up. I glanced around and reached down, then told myself no.