Drop It and Move On

By Eddie Griffin

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Sometimes it’s hard to give up. Take the money and run, a bank robber once said. But actually getting away is a different story. After committing his crime, the bank robber desperately tries to get away. But the long arm of the law was there.

“Throw your gun and raise your hands,” said the Texas Ranger sharptshooter. “I got a machine gun pointed at the top of your head.”

Tom Arnold has the drop on me and there was no other alternative except to die, then and there, on my belly in a storm drain. Giving meant facing criminal charges, one of which carried the death penalty. Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. I was a dead man, anyway.

Taking hostages while committing bank robbery was a capital offense in Texas, up until 1972, the year I was taken down. There were four of us who pulled the bank heist, but in order to escape we had to take hostages and a police squad car. To make matters worse, they sent the sharpshooting Lone Ranger Tom Arnold after us.

“Throw your gun out, or I’ll blow your head off,” Arnold repeated. It was his second warning. The last kidnapper he shot in the back of the head, two months prior, received no warning at all. It was that shot, at a thousand yards out, through the back windshield of a getaway car, put this same Tom Arnold in the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in Waco, Texas.

He had given Eddie Griffin a second warning, but nothing could give him the hope of another life, except Christ Jesus, himself.

I know how Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton must feel on this day after North Carolina and Indiana. Like a machine gun at point blank range, it’s over. Democratic leaders and supporters are telling her, “Throw out your gun and give up.” Giving up now would be without a loss of honor.

Take it from me, Hillary, the consequence of giving up may not be as bad as it seems. It is one thing to watch your long-held dreams die. But to let her candidacy die with honor may not be as bad as a long prison sentence, instead of the death penalty. You see, I was a die-hard, too. But someone once told me, die hard, but die you must.

It is time to heal… time for Eddie Griffin to heal… time for Hillary Clinton to heal… and time for the Democratic Party to heal. There is life after death.