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Not So Funny

If you were to go by Twitter mentions alone, the big news this week was the woman who broke into an area McDonalds by climbing through the drive-through window. Dubbed the “Howard County Hamburglar”, her crime has been the source of much amusement on social media.

I don’t know why, but I just don’t find it funny. It feels sad to me.

At the age of twenty-seven, this young woman believed this was a viable plan. What motivated her? What is her story? Perhaps I am more inclined to care about her story because no one was physically injured during the crime. Maybe it’s because she is not that much younger than my older daughter.

What kind of a life do you have if you think that crawling into a McDonald’s is a risk worth taking? What kind of education did you have? What kind of job opportunities are available to you? Was there one definitive point along the way that she needed guidance or a mentor and didn’t have one? Or were there a million tiny stumbles along the way that led to this giant misstep?

It’s okay if it made you laugh. Sometimes the news is so awful these days that we have to find something to laugh at. But for some reason I can’t.

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