At Rise

At Rise: Mike and Rob are crouched down behind a bush or some kind of shrubbery. They are dressed all in black and are equipped with the means necessary to break into a house.

ROB: Dude, c’mon let’s go!

MIKE: I don’t know if I can do this.

ROB: What the hell’re you talking about?! You talked all that big talk and now you’re backing out?

MIKE: I just don’t feel right about this

ROB: I don’t understand how you can be stalling on me right now, at this point…after we’ve gone so far. I’ve done all the planning, I staked out the house for a week, I even managed to get Mr. Jones away from his house for the night, and now you’re bitching out on me? I don’t get it

MIKE: For one thing, I feel as though our plan is vulnerable, I mean, how do you know Mr. Jones bought our story? Just because we put a letter in his mailbox saying that there is an emergency school board meeting doesn’t mean that he’s gonna buy it and be gone all night. And secondly, how do we know that his house isn’t wired with some kind of alarm?

ROB: First of all, I know that he bought our story about the meeting because the letter said the meeting was at 7 and he left at 6:30 in a suit and tie…where else could he be going?

MIKE: A date?

ROB:Please, nobody with as much body hair and BO as Mr. Jones has is gonna be going on a date in the middle of the week. And secondly, I know he doesn’t have an alarm because I watched him come and go at least ten times this last week and never once did he set or disarm an alarm of any kind. So what else you got?

MIKE: I don’t see the point of breaking into Mr. Jones’s house anyways, seems like a huge risk to me.

ROB: Don’t you realize that the size of the risk is relative to the size of the reward? And in this case, the size of the reward makes the size of the risk quite miniscule.

MIKE: Speaking of the reward, how can you be so certain about the value of it all?

ROB: Are you kidding me? Dude sits there in class one day talking all this about how he’s got this great baseball card collection at home, and then is dumb enough to bring in a few examples of it to show us that he wasn’t lying. Might I remind you by the way, that one those cards happened to be the rookie card of Mr. M squared?

MIKE: Who?

ROB: Mickey Mantle moron and that wasn’t even the best of the lot.

MIKE: Fine, so we know he’s got it I suppose, but how’re we supposed to find it anyway? He could have hid it really well.

ROB: This is probably a 1200 square foot house with about four rooms and no basement or crawl space, I really don’t think that we should have any trouble finding it within the next hour and a half, which as you know is how long it will take for him to drive to the school, and back again, to say nothing of the time he will spend looking around the school looking for the meeting.

MIKE: Fine, I guess you might have all the angles covered, I won’t argue with you on that one. But don’t you even feel the slightest guilt about attempting to steal from Mr. Jones?

ROB: Why should I?

MIKE: Well, this is the same Mr. Jones who, when he saw how poorly you were doing on his math tests, set it up so that you could come in everyday and have him tutor you.

ROB: So? That’s his job

MIKE: Sure, why not? Except for the fact that his tutoring hours are at lunch for everybody else, and he made an exception for you, now is that his job?

ROB: Whatever dude, we gonna do this or not?

MIKE: Hang on there, I just thought of something I had never thought of before. Why did Mr. Jones allow you to come in after school for tutoring? What makes you so special?

ROB: I don’t know

MIKE: Me neither…hmmm.

ROB: What’re you getting at?

MIKE: Not sure, just trying to figure out why you were getting special allowances when nobody else was.

ROB: I don’t know, maybe he saw that I was a gifted individual that just needed the proper mentoring to get on the right track and make some significant contribution to the world. Like that guy in Good Will Hunting.

MIKE: Yeah, given the fact that you have never gotten an A in anything, ever, makes me seriously doubt that. No, there’s gotta be another reason. (Gives Mike a sideways glance) You guys