It was the morning of my 18th Birthday and my best friends and I had planned to have a joint birthday party. His birthday is literally the day before mine so on my birthday we rolled them together to have a grand ole’ shindig. The day of the party we had to run a few errands last of which was picking up a few cases of pop for the party. So around 3 in the afternoon a few hours before the party started we stopped off at the super market grabbed a few cases of pop.
It’s important to note that we are not the most popular kids, we enjoyed video games and role-playing games and we live in a small town thus my mind is rarely mischievous, so when I decided to stop off in the dollar store next to the super market for some kiddy party favours as “gag” gifts for the attendees there wasn’t any forward thought put into my actions. We grabbed a bunch of bouncy balls and dollar store toys for the guests and for whatever reason I also bought myself a relevantly real looking fake plastic gun – the one that fires caps and has a bright red tip.
So we loaded up the trunk with our purchases as well as the pop and I kept the gun in the front seat with me. After a short while I decided to show my friend how you can make a fake gun look extra real by simply cracking off the Red Tip that the cap gun had and to his surprise I removed it with relative ease without breaking the barrel of the gun. As we pulled up to a red light with cars on either side of us I decided to do something very stupid. For whatever reason I decided to demonstrate that the gun looked real by creating a tableau between him (who was driving the car) and myself depicting me forcing him to drive at gunpoint. He played along putting his hand up and looking scared and I mouthed the words, “ I will fucking kill you.” When the light turned green, we laughed it off and I through the gun to the floor.
Now anyone reading this knows what happened next, however for whatever reason there was no fathomable possibility to us why a cop car could be tailing us however after a few short minutes it seemed as though a police cruiser was on us. Obviously hindsight is 20/20 cause now it’s clear as day.
As we drove down the street said cop car pulled a U-turn behind us and started following. My friend jokingly said that they’re out to get us – referencing our “bad boy” demeanour which is non-existent. Then shortly after we saw another cop car pass us quickly, and a split second later at the cusp of the street bend ahead another cop car comes racing around the corner, this time directly at us.
My friend slams on the breaks and before we can understand what the hell is going on the police cruiser has pulled off in front of us in our path, the cop is out his door with gun drawn and yelling at us to put our “fucking hand in the air.” A split second later a fourth police cruiser comes from a side street up alongside the driver’s side window – again police officer hopping out instantly and drawing his gun. The two cars that were tailing us are now out and guns drawn. The tension is quickly offset by the fact that “Play that funky Music White boy” is blaring on the radio and I can barely tell what’s happening.
Seconds which felt like minutes have passed before I realize that my friend is screaming at me to put up my fucking hands since as of that moment I still had not moved. My hands shot up faster than light and after a few seconds they ask me to undo my seat-belt and get out of the car. Luckily I took a second to think over the speed at which I would go to my seat-belt because my thinking now is that had I done it in an aggressive manor I may not be alive today, but slowly and surely I unbuckled my seat belt and exited the car.
I was asked to back up towards an unseen officer, told to kneel, handcuffed and laid flat on my chest. In the back of the police cruiser, the events are replaying in my head because at this point I still have NO IDEA why we were pulled over. For whatever reason, I suppose the sheer meaninglessness of the act I pretended to mimic, did not come into my head. As they searched the car I heard the police officer say after a few short minutes, “It’s a fucking toy.” When I get nervous or scared or really any sort of excitement I get happy. For whatever reason I had the biggest grin on my face and looking over to my friend who was in a different cruisers back seat, his face white as a ghost must’ve been so confused by the shit eating grin on mine. After a short while they let us out and asked us some questions; mainly why the fuck we had the gun. I explained my stupidity but it was questioned many times as it just didn’t make sense, why the hell would I have done that. Well I don’t know.
Finally they allowed us to go back to our vehicle and as I passed the officers one asked if we should have the gun back, to which a female officer replied, “No clearly they are not mature enough.” Which, for the most part I tend to agree with.
Needless to say we had a good story during our party a few hours later.
TheLiriValley 