My Problem Explained

Jack Handy cracks me up. By chance, I have been struggling with a bank robbery plot element in my current work in progress. I've decided to drop it because I just can't figure out a way to make it believable (for a 12 and 13 year old set of characters).

Then I came across this bit of brilliance in The New Yorker..it is by Jack Handy (of SNL fame) and it pretty much summed up my novel issues. NOTE that the original is much longer and I shortened it for this post.

THE PLAN by Jack Handy

The plan isn't foolproof. For it to work, certain things must happen:

—The door to the vault must have accidentally been left open by the cleaning woman.

—The guard must bend over to tie his shoes and somehow he gets all the shoelaces tied together. He can't get them apart, so he takes out his gun and shoots all his bullets at the knot. But he misses. Then he just lies down on the floor and goes to sleep.

—Most of the customers in the bank must happen to be wearing Nixon masks, so when we come in wearing our Nixon masks it doesn't alarm anyone.

—There must be an empty parking space right out in front. If it has a meter, there must be time left on it, because our outfits don't have pockets for change.

—The monkeys must grab the bags of money and not just shriek and go running all over the place, like they did in the practice run.

—The security cameras must be the early, old-timey kind that don't actually take pictures.

—When the big clock in the lobby strikes two, everyone must stop and stare at it for at least ten minutes.

—If somebody runs out of the bank and yells, "Help! The bank is being robbed!," he must be a neighborhood crazy person who people just laugh at.

—Any fingerprints we leave must be erased by the monkeys.

—When we exit the bank, there must be a parade going by, so our getaway car, which is decorated to look like a float, can blend right in.

—During the parade, our car must not win a prize for best float, because then we'll have to have our picture taken with the award.

—At the rendezvous point, there must be an empty parking space with a meter that takes hundred-dollar bills.

—The robbery is blamed on the monkeys. ♦

Question: Do you ever go this far in your writing -- trying mightily to make something work when, really, it just needs to go -- or am I the only one?