Keep your shirt on

One of the checkerboard jumps in my checkered career was working as a teacher, and although I taught many fine people, there were some who were...not so savory.

And one of them came to my attention several years after being subjected to my relentless teaching.  He was flying on an airplane and was arrested for attempting sexual assault on a female passenger in the lavatory area of the plane.

My first reaction, after being stunned (once again) at the heinous crime, was to wonder how he expected to escape after doing what he did. The last I heard, he was subdued and taken into custody, and, one hopes, sentenced to a long long time locked away (if guilty, I hasten to add...)

A far less serious crime, but no less stupid, took place at the end of this year's Super Bowl in Houston when a person or persons unknown made off with a stinky, sweaty #12 jersey worn by Thomas Edward Patrick "Tom" Brady, Jr. during the game.

Brady, as irritating a man who ever pulled a jersey over his head, is nonetheless an outstanding football player, and would probably be thought of as the greatest quarterback of all time, had Johnny Unitas never been born.  The jersey was valuable to him, and there were plans to exhibit it in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

And now those plans can proceed again, because Houston police, the FBI, Mexican law enforcement, and the Patriots have combined to nab the Thief Of Badshirts, identifying him as Martin Mauricio Ortega, formerly of the Mexican tabloid La Prensa. This story shows how they cracked the case.

I mean to tell you, there are murders, major crimes and all sorts of offenses left unsolved in this country, but doggone if we don't have Tom's Dirty Shirty back where it belongs! The shirt is enroute to Brady's gigantic home in Boston as we speak.

"Hopefully when I get the jerseys back I can make something very positive come from this experience," Brady said, ungrammatically.

But the ? remains for me.  Exactly what did Ortega, if he indeed pull off this caper, expect to do with the larcenous laundry he had? Can't sell it, can't have your friends over to see it, can't put in on to wear down at Home Depot, so what was his goal?

It's like stealing the Mona Lisa, or the original painting of dogs playing poker.  Nice to have, but you can't tell anyone.