Monday, August 22, 2011

what a joke.

For a little under a year, I lived in East Boston. (land of the best pizza you'll ever eat) and Logan Airport. During that time, I became familiar with the route to and from work; so much so that sometimes a stop sign would just happen to get passed without fully stopping.

One grey snowy morning, I was doing my usual trek, when I (ahem) rolled through a stop sign. As luck would have it, a cop at the intersection saw me and dutifully pulled me over. The bitch of this whole thing was that I called a co-worker to tell leave her a voicemail explaining I was running a little bit behind because of whatever reason, when this happened. Ummm....Mary? I gotta go--i'm getting pulled over.

He walks to my car, I roll down the window and he asked me if I knew why I was being pulled over. No, I really don't officer. Well uh, yah just drove through this stawp sign, hun. Oh my god, I'm so sorry officer, I live in this neighborhood, I should know better. Alright hun, I'm just gonna run yawh registration and license, an' I'll be right back. Ok, officer I replied. I'm at this point shaking and saying Hail Marys.

He comes back to my window and says: Umm, it says in the system that I hafta take yah in, you got like, 4 wah-rents out faw yah arrest.

At this point, I see myself in orange. The sane part of my brain didn't take over, it just shut down. I didn't question this dude's authority, I just thought to myself, whelp, that's it for me. My whole body began convulsing and I immediately started sobbing.

The cops' eyes got huge and he bent closer to my window and said Oh my gawd hun! I was just jokin' around with yah! It's just a joke, I'm just jokin'!!!! Look! I'm only givin' you ah wahnin'!!!!

To which, I looked up at him, still sobbing and exclaimed that's (sob) the best (sniffle sob) joke (sniff) anyone's ever played on me ever (long wail of tears and snot ensued). He patted me on the shoulder, gave me my warning, and went back to his car, I think perhaps a bit shell shocked at my reaction.

The thing of it is, I know that there a lot of decent police officers out there; my grandfather was a Police Officer, and I am proud of that fact, as are some of my cousins. But they are the single agency that have the ability to take away a person's freedom, and when the mere mention of the fact that your whole life as you know it gets threatened, things get sensitive very quickly.

Best part of this whole thing is that i never hung up the voice mail I was leaving for my co-worker. I got into work and she couldn't stop laughing for a good half hour. shit.

1 comment:

  1. I remember this story. Similar thing happened to me last month. Except, there was no joke. Wish my cop was kidding around. But there appeared to be not a shred of humor in his bullying, overcompensating little body.

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