Monday, August 03, 2009

Guts

Please excuse me if you caught this story from Yahoo. Last week a bank teller in Seattle was somehow not impressed with a would-be robber standing before him, demanding he fill a large book bag with cash. He threw down the bag, lunged for the crook and demanded to see a weapon. His bluff called, the robber wannabe headed straight for the door and started running, with the teller in pursuit. Several blocks later, the teller brought down the perp (as we hipsters like to call them) and held him until police arrived.
Two days later, the teller was fired for not following company procedure in such incidents. A company spokesperson became mute when asked about it, but the teller was pretty understanding. His instincts just took over, he said, and he understood management's decision. He even described himself as an "adrenaline junkie" and admitted to chasing shoplifters when he worked in retail stores.
I once worked at a bank. It might be overstating it to say the job was boring as Hell, but not by much! This poor guy deserves another chance. Let's hope his next gig is doing repo work, bounty hunting or collecting poisonous snakes. Too bad wing walking seems to have disappeared as a career option. Perhaps the bank could give him a recommendation.

For a long time it seemed that if any dictator on earth had things pretty well sewn up, it would be either Cuba's Castro or Ferdinand Marcos from the Phillipines. Marcos and his family seemed to have a hook in just about everything that happened in the country, and his anti-Communist credentials were good enough to keep the Reagan administration from interfering
But even dictators have opposition, and so it was that "Ninoy" Aqino arrived at the Manilla airport to begin an anti-Marcos movement in 1983. Marcos was one step ahead of his adversary and had him shot dead within a minute of getting off the plane.
That would have ended the threat to Marcos, but he didn't figure on Aqino's wife, Corazon, who had never done anything political even though her family was well-known. What followed took about three years to complete, but Aqino shocked the world by leading a non-violent movement that ousted the Marcos family and resulted in her taking over as head of state.
Cori was more successful as a candidate than as an actual manager, but the country has managed to keep a narrow grip on democracy ever since those days. Her story represents the rare circumstance of someone prominent taking a stance not only risky to her career, but to her life as well. This exercise in courage would compare, I would say, to the American Founding Fathers who put their lives on the line for their new country and did so against long odds. She had no army except for supporters known as "People's Power", tired of being on the wrong side or right and wrong, but that turned out to be enough.
Mrs. Aqino gets a mention here because he passed away last week at age 76. Her passing was noted by thousands as love for her filled the streets of Manilla.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home