My Story: Armed Bank Robbery

In my early late 20s I dated a nice guy named Mike. By nice I mean sincere, thoughtful, liberal, and uniquely odd in both sense of humor and outlook on life. His goal in life was to be an educator, and my heart went out for him since he was himself a B/C average student at a time when A-students were getting all the jobs and glory for going into the humanitarian career of teaching. (We came out of school just as Teach for America was starting.) His major flaw, I thought at the time, was a deep caring love for his automobile that outweighed his devotion to, uh, me.

I lived in NYC and he lived in upstate NY, then Ohio (I think it was Ohio) and then Philly. After we had a long-distance relationship for maybe a year, I offered to move to Philly, not necessarily to move in together but to move closer, and he hastily declined. When one of his friends (all of whom I'd met a couple of times) inquired about me, he said he told them we were "having problems." I found that an odd choice of phrasing for a dating couple, not to mention none of the person's business really, but what-ev-er.

In retrospect, I was pushing our relationship physically and emotionally. Regardless, our coupleship ended shortly thereafter.

I heard from him once after I began dating the man who is now my husband; in about 1995 he wanted to meet me in NY for lunch, to tell me about a very common non-life-threatening STD that he had.

Anyway. Yesterday I was reading some of the blogs I have bookmarked on our laptop. I only visit them occasionally when I'm on that computer. A name on a blogroll piqued my curiosity, a woman who shared his German last name -- "Wouldn't it be funny if that's his wife," I thought, "Or maybe it's his mom..."

The blogger clearly was not related to him. But then my curiosity got the best of me. A Google search of his name turned up nothing until I tried the name and the word "teacher" ...

In early 2007 this guy robbed a bank!

He was charged with 2 felonies, first-degree robbery and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon; and 2 misdemeanors, first-degree criminal possession of stolen property and endangering the welfare of a child.

Whaaaaa?

It was not what I'd ever expect to have heard. I knew the guy was tightly wound, and suspected he had some personal issues he was choosing to avoid, but I did not expect something like this.

I was part of his life for a couple of years, we had corresponded for several years prior after meeting in an internship program. Now all I can do is wonder -- what happened in between to lead to this?

This didn't make the news where I live, and it was a while ago, so I can process it at my leisure.
What do other people do when this happens?

• What if you hear about an ex on the news?
• What goes through your head?
• Do you wonder if you had anything to do with it?
• Do you rack your brain for tidbits that make you go, "Yeah, I knew it."
• What if, like me, there isn't anything like that in your mental file?
• What if the person does something worse than armed robbery?

Got a story like this? Email it to me at janice [at] growyourfollowing [dot] com and I'll post it here. You don't need to name names, and I won't post any links back to the news reports, but I may ask you for them to fact-check the details. (I've got an editorial background, after all.)

I may write you with some followup questions, as I'm fascinated by the train wreck inside my head right now.

Mainly I'd love to support each other via shared experiences. If you're not the only one who feels that way, then you're not crazy, right?

I'm not looking for "he/she did this and that's why we broke up" -- I'm looking for situations where an ex did something later, after you were no longer together, that made you wonder.