The devil didn’t make him do it. His mother did.

Some things you just can’t make up. This one appeared in the local paper last week.

SOMEWHERE NEAR NORTH PUFFIN — A local man told the Sheriff that he used a water pistol to rob the Town Pharmacy because his mother told him to do it.

“Spoony McGowen” (not his real name), 35, is being held on $50,000 bail on charges of assault and robbery with a weapon and felony narcotics possession. The charges show he pointed a black water pistol at the pharmacist and forced him to load a white garbage bag (with red drawstrings) with morphine, OxyContin, and hydromorphone tablets.

The robber said he gave some of the pills to his getaway driver for borrowing his girlfriend’s car for the robbery and that the driver was supposed to split the pills with Mr. McGowen’s mother for her help. She has not been charged.

He could pay $25,000 in fines and spend 15 years in jail for the $566 robbery.

The street value of the OxyContin is more than $18,000.

Far be it from me to indict the school system but ya gotta think Mr. McGowen was poorly served. After all, he said he robbed the drug store because he had heard about all the stimulus money and “he was tired of being broke.”

Mr. McGowen was broke because he had no job.

He had no job not because he has an extensive criminal history but rather because he does not feel satisfied by his educational experience.

He does not feel satisfied by his educational experience because he quit school in 10th grade at age 19.

Apologists have proven that everything from political incorrectness to forces of nature are not our fault. It is our environment that teaches us how to behave. Or our genes. Or our jeans. At any rate, since we cannot control our environment (except how globally warm it gets) or our genes, we bear no responsibility for anything. It’s not our fault we had no ice or water on hand before a hurricane. It’s not our fault we didn’t recognize that our mortgage payments would be twice our incomes. It’s not our fault government-financed jobs programs haven’t put people to work.

And most important, Robbing a drug store with a water pistol wasn’t Mr. McGowen’s fault.

Mr. McGowen does deserve to go to jail, though. You simply can’t rob a drug store and throw your mother under the bus for it without suffering the consequences.

That said, we still have to revamp our schools. After all, Mr. McGowen is really really bad at his job of being a crook. A squirt gun? He must have learnt that in school, doncha think?

After all, It couldn’t have been his fault.

Dear Governor Crist:

I know you have built your career opposing tax increases, so I particularly want to thank you for raising the taxes on cigarettes to help balance the Florida budget and pay off the looming deficit. Goodness knows we can use all the help we can get. You had good company. Every Republican in the state Senate voted for it, their statewide political aspirations and “no new taxes” pledges notwithstanding.

On Wednesday, the cigarette tax here in Florida will quadruple, rising a dollar to $1.34 per pack. That pack of smokes will now cost at least $5.

“I view it more as a health issue than a tax issue,” Governor Crist (R-FL) said in the Orlando Sentinel. “Ronald Reagan used to say if you want to kill something, tax it. It wouldn’t be bad if we killed smoking. It would save a lot of lives.”

As of July 1, Florida’s new cigarette tax is $1.34 per pack. Florida’s cigarette tax has remained unchanged for decades. The increase means this state leaps from fourth-lowest in the nation to bumping out Pennsylvania for twentieth spot. The legislature expects that extra $1 tax to generate more than $900 million a year.

Five bucks a day, up in smoke.

Governor, your keen action has had the beneficial side effect you wanted. My next door neighbor, Henryk, has bought his last carton of cigarettes. “I’m too cheap to pay $50 a carton,” Henk said. “I just won’t pay it.”

Now, really, Henk isn’t nearly as cheap as I am. I quit in 1976 when the nation celebrated the bicentennial and cigarettes jumped to fifty cent a pack. That wasn’t for the (w)rapper. That wasn’t for the excise tax. That was the price. Imagine paying FIVE DOLLARS for a carton of the little cigars I preferred. I’m not sorry I quit. Even starting with the now infinitesimal price I paid a third of a century ago, I figure I have saved more than $30,000 dollars or the price of a couple of small cars.

Henk says he’s done with tobacco.

He’s going back to pot.

It’s cheaper.