Getting Away With It

It's a little-known fact that Good Girls are only good because they know how to get away with being bad. They have their shiny halo's on display for the whole world to see and they walk down the street in their diamond slippers never stepping on a crack in the pavement.
No one is watching when a Good Girl skips down a side alley and mugs a baby for candy. How do they get away with it? Here's the secret.


Deny Everything


I'm starting with the last resort, because when it comes down to it this is the Good Girl's most powerful weapon against everyone else. It's their word against yours.
A Good Girl simply flat-out refuses to admit they were in any way, shape or form involved in any evil deeds.
“Of course I didn't do it, I would never do something like that!” is a perfectly plausible alibi for a Good Girl, who is always presumed innocent even when proven guilty.
A Good Girl could get caught with her hand in the cookie jar and a simple “Freddy tricked me” will suffice, while poor Freddy cops the blame.


Admit to Small Faults


In direct contradiction to the “deny everything” technique comes this little crafty piece of sly fault avoidance from the Good Girl's rule book.
A Good Girl bashfully admits to small, human errors … like barely audible burps after a delicious meal, usually orchestrated with a polite hand-over-the-mouth action and a timid “excuse me” which everyone finds delightfully adorable.
Other minor mishaps can be admitted to, such as the proverbial spilt milk, as long as the Good Girl makes a grand gesture of fixing her little mistakes. No one can fault a person for such an unfortunate accident.
Cute forgetfulness admitted before any damage is done is another strong winning point for the Good Girl, who can quite easily say “I forgot to tell you, your mother called yesterday. Which reminds me, it's her birthday in a week so I bought you this card to send her. Aren't the kittens on the cover adorable?”


Be Confident


A Good Girl knows ahead of time that she'll get away with it, so she takes on every evil deed with absolute confidence.
She can walk into a bank and hold up the cashier, with her immaculately groomed hair, manicured hands and a big smile on her face. Her mannerisms scream “I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm supposed to be here” and not a single person will question her authority.
After robbing the bank, the Good Girl can go shopping at the Tiffany store next door, confident in the knowledge that no one bothered to call the police.
And even if the police came, she would deny everything.


Cover Your Tracks


Most Good Girl crimes are quite petty, like stealing her sister's clothing and “borrowing” her mother's BMW without asking. The important thing is that she knows how to cover her crime.
When she enters her sister's room she doesn't turn on the light but waits for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, you just never know when your sister will be driving past the house and see a light on in her bedroom, that's a dead giveaway that something is amiss.
The Good Girl then steps over any litter on the floor, making sure she displaces nothing. She opens the cupboard slowly and quietly, and scans the rack of clothes with her eyes only. When she spies the little black dress she came looking for, she slips the hanger off the rack and moves the neighbouring clothes to close the gap.
When she leaves the room, she doesn't have to worry about turning off the light.
The same for the BMW. If the tank is a ¼ full of petrol when she gets in, it will be a ¼ full of petrol when she gets out. If something happens while she's driving home drunk and the car ends up scratched or damaged, it's time to deny everything.


Keep Your Story Simple


Remember that line from one of those Shakespeare plays, something about protesting too much (no, I clearly don't remember it either). The point is, the more you complicate your story, the more suspicious you sound.
Also, complicated stories contain details and a Good Girl is too busy being a master criminal to waste time remembering the fine points of her cover story.
If someone asks her “Where were you at 4 o'clock?” her simple answer contains no traceable lies “I was in my bedroom studying Geography.” That sounds just like where a Good Girl would have been when the bank was robbed.
“Where did you get that Tiffany necklace?” is answered with “Oh that? I bought it at the markets 5 months ago.”
Notice how the Good Girl does not bring anyone else into her story, because that would require their back up, which leads me to the next important technique.


Trust No One


There's nobody better at getting away with it than a Good Girl working alone. She can't rely on friends as plausible alibis. Her friends may not be as good as she is, and therefore they won't be as believable. Also, they aren't as confident as the Good Girl, so they'll probably cave under pressure.


There is another important lesson in this:


Don't Brag


One sad fact for the Good Girl is that she has to keep her secret identity under wraps at all times. If it got out that she was really Cat Woman, she'd have the Mayor and Batman to contend with, and no one wants that!
Since no one can be trusted, no one can ever know about her dastardly deeds … unless she has a memory eraser gun and isn't afraid to use it.
BUT since this isn't a comic book we're talking about, just stick to the fact that bragging about getting away with it can't be done.


Last But Not Least, Know Your Limitations


If you are small and weak, then stealing an ATM might not be your thing. You might want to stick to mugging babies for candy.
Even the best Good Girl in all the world, with all her tricks of the trade up her sleeve, will come crashing down from her pearly white cloud if she exceeds her limits.


And that's all there is to it.


Now fly my pretties, fly!

T