Free Speech for the Dumb

I was in the back of a city car being driven to a drug test. This was my third time getting tested in about a year.

This meant that instead of doing my job, I was being taken to a building to pee in a cup to prove I wasn't smoking the jazz cigarettes, a process that could last up to two hours depending on the backlog.

It was evaluation season, and I was wondering how I was going to get everything finished and approved and signed in the next week or so, but couldn't get too worked up about it, because, honestly, for as much I might grumble about being taken away from my work, not doing evaluations and having an official excuse wasn't that bad.

Plus, the two HR guys driving me were acting as an unintentional comedy team.

"You're driving way too fast."

"I have to - you drive like an old lady."

"Maybe, but I'll get us there in one piece, and without a ticket. Who's gonna pay for that, anyway?"

The driver (who was going sort of fast, honestly. I mean, what's the rush?) was an old Florida cowboy type. I can't remember his name. Like the nerdy guy riding shotgun, they've both long retired. Let's call them Cowboy and the Nerd.

I wasn't paying too much attention, just hanging out in the backseat, looking down the river from the bridge, wondering how long this was going to take, and pondering what I'd get for lunch later when I heard Cowboy give his philosophy on the police.

"You know, they work for you, right? I mean, we're taxpayers," Cowboy said. The cops were also taxpayers and we were working for them also, but I wanted to see where Cowboy went with this.
"So anytime I get pulled over I just tell them whatever I want, like, 'how did you pass the physical to get on the force,' or 'Looks like you've been hitting the donuts too hard lately, buddy.' And they have to take it - they can't do anything to you. It's free speech."

"You really do that?" the Nerd asked.

"Oh yeah, everytime," replied the Cowboy. "Most of the time they're too shocked to do anything and just let me go. If they write me a ticket, I just ball it up in front of them and make fun of them. There's nothing they can do about it. It's in the Constitution."

Cowboy didn't sound like he was lying, and I'm not sure if he was or not. In any case, he believed what he was saying.

The Nerd was quiet after that, possibly trying to think of a rebuttal. I was in the back thinking, "You might be able to pull that off, Cowboy, but I'm gonna stay with my usual acting polite and still usually getting a ticket anyway plan."

And I've stuck with that plan ever since. According to a 20 second internet search, you can't get arrested (legally) for swearing at or flipping off a cop, so I'm assuming going all Don Rickles on an officer is similarly protected by our Founding Fathers. Needless to say, I'm not going to be the one to try it out, but if you do, please let me know your experiences.

Oh - and I totally passed my drug test, by the way.

Arrested For Driving While Blind

I've received a lot of tickets in my driving lifetime. A few for speeding (thanks, 301!) , a failure to come to a complete stop which was totally made up, and a stack full of stuff on my last night in Bradenton, including driving without shoes, dim taillights, failure to produce license, and probably driving while being too much of an outlaw for the Man to deal with.

For the most part, I've accepted that I've been at fault, paid my debt to society, moved on, and wondered how many more points I can afford on my license before my insurance skyrockets.

But it came as quite a surprise when I was going to have my car searched on my way home from Atlanta earlier this week.

I was driving back to Jacksonville after another successful trip to see my girlfriend. I was keeping it around the speed limit, even though I feel that these unnecessary rules cramp my style.

I was probably doing about 76 when I saw the two cop cars up on an overpass. I was able to slow down without making it too obvious, and continued on my way, nervously checking the rearview mirror every few seconds.

After a few miles I figured I had it made. "Sorry, suckers," I thought to the cops. I was still under the speed limit when I passed another cop on the side of the interstate.

"Can't do anything about driving 3 miles under the speed limit, copper," I said in my best '30s gangster voice, as I mentally flipped the double bird.

A few miles later I saw that the cop had his lights on and was chasing some poor sucker. Hey! That sucker was me!

I pulled over, confused.

"The reason I pulled you over is because I think your windows are darker than Georgia law allows."

What the hell? I bought the car at a Honda dealer, not a crackhouse. They would have told me if it was illegal, right? And besides, I lived in Florida. Your Georgia rules don't apply to me.

He put some sort of weird device on the window.

"Yeah, see, this reads an 11 and Georgia law requires a 30."

"Wait, so I'm lower?"

"No, you're higher. 11 is less than 30. Do you have anything illegal in the car, like drugs or weapons?"

"No. No. Just some clothes and trash."

"Well, I have to ask you, do you consent to a search?"

Aw, crap.

As an ex-journalist and current librarian, I'm a firm believer in America's civil liberties. I mean, what else is gonna stop some English king from quartering soldiers in our houses or telling us what to print in our broadsides or searching our taverns and public houses for bootleg tea? I also think that the drug war has opened a whole can of worms involving quasi-legal search and seizure, asset forfeiture, and a host of other bad stuff. But thinking about how much I wanted to get home, all that ACLU stuff flew out the window.

"Yeah, sure."

He took my license. Shit, I wonder how long this is gonna be? Hey, I've only had this car for like three years. What if someone stashed a bunch of cocaine somewhere and forgot about it? I could have been driving around in Tony Montana's car all this time and wouldn't know it til I got searched and ended up in prison. Hey, what if the cop plants something in the car? He seemed like the type to do that. I mean, I am in Georgia. Do they still have chain gangs here?

He walked back and asked for my registration.

"Now, I'm not gonna find anything illegal in here, right?"

"Just clothes and trash. How long will this take?"

"It'll take as long as it needs to."

He studied my registration. "What year car is this?"

"'98. Oh, wait. '09." Shit. I was thinking of the old car. I'm totally going to prison now.

He walked away again and came back again after what seemed like an hour, but was probably more like 4 minutes.

"You know, if you have any sort of misdemeanor stuff in there, you can just dump it out here on the side of the highway, no harm, no foul."

What the hell sort of trap is that? Does anyone actually fall for that? He's totally gonna plant some cocaine in the car. That's how they got Dolemite in that documentary.

 

It was totally gonna escalate like this if I had been there a few more minutes.

"I don't have anything," I said, mentally preparing for hours in the Georgia sun watching my car being taken apart and waiting for my spot on the chain gang.

"Well, I thank you for giving permission for the search. Here's your license and registration back, along with a written warning. We just have to check every now and then with all the suspicious characters out there, you know?"

Yeah, you mean because I'm white, right? I thought super-aggressively at the cop. That showed him.

Whether it was institutional racism, my non-criminal wussy looks, the cop's laziness, or some combination of the three, I got let off with a warning. A really kinda bullshit warning, but at least I didn't have to wait while my car got taken apart, and was able to keep off the chain gang.

So if you're driving to Atlanta from Florida, watch your speed, make sure your windows aren't tinted too much, and don't fall for that misdemeanor trick. That's gotta be a trap, right?

Proof.

Go Gators!

The University of Florida's mascot is the noble and terrifying gator, which was picked because of the reptile's scariness and ferocity. As with most college towns, the mascot is everywhere - painted on the sides of stores, formed into mailboxes - if you can picture something, there's a gator on it, or in it, or holding it.

Which was fine by me, since alligators are cool and aesthetically pleasing. In fact, I had one staring at me every time I looked out my second floor window for a few months while living in Gainesville.

Years ago I was hanging out on the front porch with some friends and roommates. It was Gator Stompin' night. Gator Stompin' was a Gainesville pub crawl where you won a T-shirt and alcohol poisoning if you finished all the stops.

Our house was a block from University Avenue, so we'd get stragglers staggering by screaming out the official call of the drunk: "Whooooooo!" Naturally, we'd have to "Whooooooo!" back. You have to answer back. It's just good manners.

We passed some time on the porch, hanging out, watching drunks, and trying to figure out what we were going to do with the rest of our night. Then we hear a "Whooooooo!" louder than any "Whooooooo!" we had previously heard.

We saw a sprinting guy grasping a five foot fiberglass gator statue in his arms, Whoooooooing all through the night, running and clutching the gator like his life depended on it.

We had seen that alligator before. He stood at the entrance of a liquor store on University. We were happy that he got the chance to finally see the outside world, so we put a little more oomph in our return "Whooooooo!"

About a minute after that we saw two cops chasing the guy and his alligator. The night was getting a little more exciting.

The guy dropped his alligator during the chase. The cops yelled not to touch it. Fine by us.

Of course, as soon as the cops were gone, someone re-stole the gator and hid it.

About 15 minutes later, we see the guy running in the other direction, Whoooooooing through the night, a free man again. I seem to remember he had a pair of those twist tie handcuffs on, but that could just be dramatic license.

Brushing my teeth the next morning I looked out my second-floor window and saw the gator in his new home, nestled in a tree so he could look in on me and my roommate Scott, making sure we had adequate amounts of school spirit.

He stayed up in the tree for a few months. The landlord always thought we did it, but this was one of the few hijinx we were actually innocent of. One day he was gone, which was sort of sad. I had really gotten used to his reassuring grin.

Over the years, I would see that same statue in a variety of different stores in Gainesville, with a variety of different paintjobs. But I could tell it was him.

Oh, and the guy who stole the alligator in the first place? Well, the cops swore us to secrecy, but I can now reveal that he grew up to become one of our nation's finest vice presidents.

Green Door, What's that Secret You're Keeping?

Took a trip to Atlanta last weekend, due to my poor reading comprehension skills and lack of anything else going on in Jacksonville.

It wasn't a crazytime explosion like my last few vacations, but I was fine having a laid-back weekend hanging out with old friends, meeting new people, eating a ton, and trying to forget the speeding ticket I got on the way up there.

Oh yeah, we also discovered a secret Korean bar.

OK, it wasn't really secret secret, they had signs and stuff like any other bar, but it still felt like we discovered it. Sort of like Columbus "discovering" the Americas when people had been hanging out here for centuries. So yeah, we were totally like Christopher Columbus.

The first thing the bartender said to us as we looked around was, "It's OK, we've had white people in here."

So we felt right at home. There was a bit of a language barrier, their English wasn't the best, and our Korean was rusty. They also didn't seem to know too much about their drinks. We'd ask what was in certain drinks and either get an "I don't know" or two fingers crossed in an X warning us away. Which sucked, because I really wanted to try something called "The Hulk." But we ended up with something called "The Junebug," which was highly recommended and I think the only drink on the menu they knew how to make.

As we drank our flourescent green girly drinks we looked the place over. It was huge - much bigger than the outside would have us believe. There were also a couple groups of Korean guys hanging out here and there, a few of which were slumped over their table while their friends continued drinking. The waitresses would come sit next to us and brush up against us which was a bit strange, but hey, you get used to it.

There were also secret rooms. Again, they weren't secret secret, but they were closed doors that we imagined all sorts of fun was going on without us. Was there gambling going on back there? High stakes karaoke? Secret sexy stuff? There were at least handjobs being distributed, we were pretty sure.

Sadly, we never got to see behind the doors, even after one of us gave what we were sure would work as a password, "Do you even KNOW about the Misfits Fiend Club?"

Maybe next time.

Hate the Police

As a skater and punk rocker I had to hate cops. It just sort of went with the territory.

Honestly I didn't really have too much against them, other than just generally disliking them in principle as yet another set of authority figures keeping me from doing what I wanted. Usually they'd half-heartedly yell at me and my friends for skating somewhere, we'd leave, wait for them to drive away, then come back. They probably didn't care.

Besides, this was Bradenton, it's not like I was getting beaten by the LAPD. And I'd like to think that I was smart enough to realize that many of my problems with them (and most authority figures) had more to do with me wanting to bad stuff and them having to put a stop to it than anything they were actively doing to keep me down.

Every once in a while, though, you'd run into some real dicks.

I was about 17 and parked at the beach with my girlfriend around 10 or 11 PM. This was a regular thing for us since we desired privacy and didn't have an apartment, and I drove a 1977 Lincoln Continental whose backseat was about the size of one of those Japanese love hotels.

I was probably playing something romantic, like that live Bauhaus album "Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape." Man, I wish I still had that - "Rose Garden Funeral of Sores" was all kinds of awesome. And you know, for a band that was pegged as gothic and depressing, Bauhaus had some kick ass songs  - "In the Flat Field?" "Dark Entries?" Those songs kick ass. And while we're at it, while that first Joy Division album is supposed to be all depressing, there's some rock jams on that, too. Is "Novelty" on that one? You know, "When people listen to you.."

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh yeah. So the music was working and we were in the backseat. We weren't actually having actual sex sex yet, but second base had definitely been rounded.Things were going pretty well.

Then there was a metallic tap, tap, tap on the backseat window.

"Shit! This is just like those stories where the hook-hand guy comes back from the dead to kill the teenagers having sex on the Indian burial ground," I thought, reasonably enough.

Within seconds of the tap, as I was trying to remember how the kids outwitted the hook-hand killer, the entire back seat was illuminated by a high powered flashlight being held by an angry looking policeman. Actually the beam was mostly focused on my girlfriend's chest.
"Step out of the car," a voice commanded. "Now."

The cop continued to shine his light on us. Well, mostly on her, as she scrambled to put on her shirt.
I got out of the car wearing only a pair of shorts.

"What are you two doing here," the cop asked. "Do you know I could arrest you right now for public nudity and lewd and lascivious activity?"

"No sir, I...No. I mean, I didn't. No."

"Do you want to go to jail tonight?

"No, sir."

"How much money do you have on you?"

"What?"

"How much money do you have?"

"About three dollars."

That was true. I pulled out my pocket to show him. For some reason I never carried a wallet in those days, preferring my bills all wadded up in my pocket Spicoli style.

"Get out of here and don't let me catch you here again," he said, as he glanced back towards the backseat, I guess in hopes that my girlfriend had decided to keep her shirt off during this conversation.

My hands were shaking as I got back in the car. "I think that cop just tried to get a bribe from me," I said to my girlfriend, more astonished than angry. After the initial shock wore off, I had lots of plans of reporting him and getting him fired, or writing a stirring letter to the paper, letting the people know just what the police force was up to on Anna Maria Island. Of course, I'd have to change some minor details. Like, maybe we were having a fully clothed picnic on the beach. In the daytime.

"They can't do that to me," I ranted. "I'm an American. What is this, the Gestapo? The KGB? Luckily, I got his badge number. Yeah, he didn't count on that. Let's see...there was a 45 in there...Was there an R?"
Naturally, I didn't end up doing anything, and we ended up finding another place to park at night.

One of my friends would relate this story to his friends in college later, employing the "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" maxim from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In his version, the cop made me do push-ups and recite the Pledge of Allegiance before letting me go. I sort of wish that happened, as it makes a much better story than me driving off shaking and dreaming up revenge fantasies for a couple weeks until I moved on to other distractions.