We All Fall Short

But after we fall, we don't go and rob a bank.

Navahcia Edwards would like the court to be merciful when she is sentenced for her part in an armed bank robbery. In her defense, she insists that she is not the person she would seem to be, based on trial testimony. She's worked hard, all her life, and she fell short. Everyone falls short.

Her excuse for robbing the bank lies in her wretched childhood of abuse and negligence, because being left to care for your siblings at the age of five will naturally pre-dispose a girl towards bank robbery. Did that explain why she copied The Town when she organized the heist?

Not being nurtured, as her father believes, led her to think that what she and her boyfriend saw in a movie could be translated into real life. You might think that someone who posted a high GPA at Moraine Valley Community College would have enough education to realize that Ben Affleck was acting out a script that he wrote based entirely on his imagination. Writers get to write the ending they want. It has nothing to do with what would transpire in the real world.

She wanted to have a career in modeling but if a girl isn't unusually tall and thin as a rail, she isn't going to make it no matter how hard she works. Ms. Edwards drifted towards the less desirable projects available, the ones that involve nudity and pornography.

So she found a job working at a bank but there isn't much money in a career as a bank teller. With all that money around, she used her education to figure out how to embezzle some of it, but she wasn't smart enough to not get caught. It was her promise to pay the money back, and avoid jail time, that led to her plot to rob the bank where she once worked to get the money to reimburse the first theft.

The FBI didn't follow Ben Affleck's script and they soon arrested Ms. Edwards and her accomplice, who promptly turned on her and made her the brains of the operation. With the trial concluded, and facing a long sentence, Ms. Edwards asks the judge to be lenient. We all fall short, and she blames her dysfunctional upbringing for turning to crime.

She is that lost five-year-old child who was left alone, and she wasn't at the bank when it was robbed. Okay, sure, she helped in the planning, but that was it.

The prosecutor wants her put away for 10 to 12, which would give her plenty of time to complete a college degree. Filmmaking or creative writing would be good choices for someone who fell short by believing a piece of fiction was a documentary.