Skip to main content

Suspicious

I happen to be a Chris Rock fan. Most of the time, his stuff is funny and has a little social commentary thrown in. The goofy looking faces don't hurt, either. Anyhow, he did this one bit where cops gave him a hard time because he was black. The punchline is something along the lines of, "he scared me so bad, I thought I'd stolen my own car." I've always thought it was funny, if nothing else because it's a ridiculous response to a bad situation.

As of this week, I know how he feels.

I got up on Tuesday morning and went about my business as usual. I had ironed a shirt & picked out a pair of gray slacks the night before, so I got dressed fairly quickly. It's not like it's hard or anything: slacks, shirt, jacket, shoes, beanie. It's also the same routine every morning, so I don't even think about it any more. I can, and do, do it while half asleep. Really, the only detail that's changed over the years is that I'll wear a black leather jacket instead of a blue Eddie Bauer jacket. The blue one started to get a little ragged, so it was time for a change. As for the beanie, it's just flippin' cold at that hour.

Anyhow, I walked to my car, got in, and started the engine. I realized that there was a good amount of water on my windows, so I grabbed a squeegee from the trunk and got to work. I figured it wouldn't take that long, so I just left the car running.

About half-way through my task, I noticed the light of a passing car in the corner of my eye. I took a brief glance backward, but nothing caught my attention so I turned back to my task. The light didn't go away, though. I did a double-take, and I realized that the light was actually one of those mini-spotlight things that police cars have near the front. And it was shining right at me. Weird.

Suddenly, the officer spoke to me, "good morning, is that your car?" I thought he was going to give me a hard time for idling the car, so I braced myself for the tongue lashing. However, he had asked me a question, so I responded that this was indeed my car.

The next part surprised me, to be honest. The officer very calmly said, "okay, what's your last name?" He wanted to make sure I wasn't stealing the car? Seriously? It's an older car, and I was in the process of wiping down the windows so that I could safely drive the thing. I'm no thief, but I can't imagine many car thieves spend the time to clean up the car they're about to steal. Also, I may have been wearing dark clothing (gray & black mostly), but I was wearing slacks and loafers, fercryinoutloud. Those items can't possibly be near the top of any lists for preferred clothing when committing a crime, can they? Movies always show criminals wearing comfortable gear that they can move in, like tennis shoes and sweatshirts. Hollywood just wouldn't lie to me like that, it wouldn't.

Well, I gave the guy my last name, and he told me, "okay, hold on a sec while I check." By this point, the surprise had worn off. I figured I wasn't done with the windows, either, so I turned back to the squeegee. He'd figure out his mistake soon enough anyway. Mid-wipe, it occurred to me that the officer was probably commending himself for being so observant. Me being me, my inner smart ass provided a haughty, "ha! Dick Tracy over there missed a few key details, though."

A few seconds later, his computer confirmed that I was, in fact, innocent of any perceived crime. He thanked me for my time, wished me a good day, and drove off. Now, I could've gotten mad; I think I had a reason to be upset. I could also have spent some time wondering whether unzipping my jacket a tiny bit to reveal the non-black dress shirt underneath would have made a difference. 

Ultimately, I decided to go Chris Rock on the whole situation. Chuckling to myself, I drove to work. I'm a suspicious character when I wear business casual clothing, don't ya know.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Good Things ...

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where Do I Go?

As the days of COVID-19 are dragging on, we are having to make more adjustments to our usual routines. Some of these changes are so mundane that I haven't mentioned them at all in this blog, while others have lead to some pretty funny anecdotes . That's probably par for the course, since you wouldn't expect a global pandemic to be all giggles. As it turns out, however, not all of the anecdotes happen to us directly. Having to socially distance and remotely do things has actually led to at least one goofy episode that we found out from afar. You see, it was our niece's birthday recently, but we couldn't visit her because of the aforementioned social distancing. So, we figured we'd ship her a present and call her on her birthday. We couldn't be there in person, but we could still wish her well and try to make her feel special on her birthday. Given that shipping times have been erratic the last few months, we ordered the present with plenty of time, and it arr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...
Post a Comment
Read more