For a time, before he was yanked back to reality, everything seemed to be going so well in Emilio Villanueva's restaurant heist.

Yesterday in Corpus Christi, the 17-year-old runaway concealed his Dumb and Dumber hairdo under a beanie and his face behind a bandana. Clutching an Airsoft pistol, he strode into Floyd's Restaurant in the city's Flour Bluff neighborhood and stated his bad intentions.

The lady behind the register had evidently believed that the air pistol was real, for she offered no resistance when Villanueva said he was taking the money, seized the cash register and turned and ran.

And that, dear Hair Balls readers, was where the hitch came in...

Villanueva forgot to unplug the cash register. When the power cord reach the end of its length, Villanueva's forward motion caused it to be ripped from his clutches and fall to the floor. The would-be robber panicked and fled the scene, leaving the loot behind.

After taking a witness statement, a Corpus cop remembered a bulletin about a runaway who fit the description of the restaurant robber. The cop followed that hunch to Villanueva's mom's house, where she was found to be in tears. The cop asked her if her son had been in trouble recently, and her cries grew exponentially louder. (And those lamentations were all he could get in the way of a response.)

Villanueva soon turned himself in and handed over the Airsoft gun, the bandanna, the ski mask, and a confession to the attempted robbery. He is currently in the Nueces County Jail on charges of suspicion of robbery.