“You
are the most tragic person I have ever met.”
I laughed. My life had its ups and
downs but I know others have bigger problems than me. It’s just been a bad
week.
“It could always get worse,” I said.
“True. But you seem to have this rain
cloud following you around.”
Now that is a statement that I have to
agree with. I’m not sure what it is that makes me so prone to trials in life
but I hardly think my life is a tragedy. I have more blessings than troubles. I
have three beautiful girls who keep me going everyday even when I feel like my
world is falling apart. I have the good fortune of living in a place free of
suffering and persecution. I have a family who loves me and supports me even
when I fail. Nevertheless, I have been told that my life is way too exciting.
In the previous week, I had sprained
my ankle, cut my finger on a knife at work, dropped my phone in the toilet
(hey, it happens), forgot my umbrella on the rainiest day that month, locked
myself out of my apartment, and became for a short time the prime suspect in a
break-in at McDonald’s (no, it wasn’t me, I swear). While frustrating, all of
this didn’t amount to tragedy. Really, what else could I do but laugh at it
all?
† † †
I’m not sure how, but becoming suspect
in the eyes of the law has become an unfortunate habit of mine. I had just
dropped my car off at the mechanic’s shop to have the gauge cluster fixed so
that I wouldn’t get pulled over for speeding. It happened to me once before. But,
on this particular afternoon police would ask me more than the standard “Do you
know why I pulled you over?”
† † †
In high school, I had an old Chrysler
LeBaron with a broken speedometer. It was a cute little car, used but perfectly
reliable with the exception of a faulty digital display. I had run out of gas
on several occasions because it failed to tell me when the tank was low.
One early morning, I was driving my
boyfriend back to Fort Leonard Wood, where he had been for the previous eight
weeks for basic training. He had a weekend of a leave time and when that was
over, he had to return to base to start his job training. It was still dark
outside and there were no other cars on the road for me to judge how fast I was
going.
We were cruising along, when my boyfriend
turned to me and said, “You need to pull over.”
“What? Why?” And that was when I saw
in the rearview mirror the flashing lights of the military police car.
I was issued a ticket demanding I
return to the base in a month to appear before a judge. I had been driving
twenty miles over the posted speed limit. I was embarrassed. I am a good driver. I wasn’t trying to
speed. It was the stupid car’s fault. But, the law doesn’t place the
responsibility on the car. I had to pay the fine.
† † †
Naturally,
this was an experience I wanted to avoid repeating, so when my speedometer quit
working in my Jeep, I took it to the shop right away. I had classes that day
but my car wouldn’t be ready to pick up until later in the afternoon so I had
my mom pick me up from campus. Before she took me home we stopped at Staples so
she could pick up a few things.
As we pulled into the parking lot, we
heard a high pitched wailing coming from a nearby store. People were standing
around the parking lot waiting to see something happen. We saw two police cars
race down the road leading to the back side of the store and then a police
officer bolting behind the building.
My mom, with eyebrows raised, said, “Huh.
I wonder what’s going on. Are you coming in?” She was apparently not nearly as interested
as me.
“No. I’ll wait here.” I didn’t see any
immediate danger. It was just an alarm. There were a couple of police cars
nearby but they weren’t swarming the place.
In the movies, when there’s a big
event happening, people gather near the action. It’s the same in real life. It’s
just a natural human reaction to want to see something exciting so we can tell
our friends, “I was there. I saw everything.” It makes us feel important
because we can relay insider information to our friends, maybe even confirm or
expand on the stories they get in the news. We feel empowered for being a part
of the scene.
I remember watching one of the recent
Spiderman movies, when a crowd gathers around the reporters and news cameras,
surrounding the police tape at the scene of action when Spiderman fights off
several villains at once. “They’re too close. Don’t these people worry about
getting hurt or killed?” I remember thinking. But that’s just the movies,
because I apparently didn’t even consider that possibility when I heard blaring
sirens and saw the police force in action. I was your standard gawker.
My mom got out of the truck and headed
inside. I had lied to her. I didn’t wait where I was. With a quick scan of my
surroundings I spotted a group of people watching the events unfold. So I
jumped out of the truck, slammed the door, and made my way to where they were.
A short dark haired man with a beer
gut who was doing all the talking glanced at me as I approached. “Do you know
what happened?” I enquired; looking from him to the man he was talking to. They
didn’t appear to know each other. They were strangers drawn together at the
scene of a crime out of shear curiosity. Just like me.
“There was an armed robbery,” said the
first man. “I think they saw someone run behind the building there.” He pointed
to the alley behind Staples.
The alarm continued to blare. Whoop whoop whoop.
We talked briefly but he didn’t seem
to know any more than I did and I was feeling a bit foolish for thinking he
would. I glanced around and the only police man I saw at this point was in a
cruiser, driving slowly through the parking lot.
I gave a quick nod to the beer-bellied
man and jogged back to my mom’s truck to wait for her to finish shopping. As I
ran through the parking lot, the officer in the police cruiser spotted me and
immediately blocked my mom’s truck in with his car, lights flashing. I stopped
just short of opening the truck door, thinking “Oh crap.”
He stepped out of his car. “I need to
see some ID.”
“Yes sir.”
“Is this your vehicle?”
“No, it’s my mom’s. She’s inside.” I
pointed to the Staples door.
He waited for me to find my driver’s
license. He held up his two way radio and gave a description of my mom’s truck,
complete with license plate number, and then a description of me, “female,
blonde hair, blue eyes. Suspect was seen running through the parking lot at
Staples.” Oh God, what am I a suspect of
now?
He kept his attention on me. “Uh,
ma’am, why were you running?”
Embarrassed, I confessed to snooping
about the supposed robbery, while his radio continued to relay conversations
between the dispatcher and other officers. What I got from that information was
the suspect had run out of a check cashing store nearby, a scan of his
information revealed he had passed bad checks and a warrant was out for his
arrest. He had a woman with him. It was not the rumored armed robbery I heard
about from the beer-bellied man. I looked around and noticed four more police
cars had blocked me in with my mom’s truck.
The officer looked past me, into the
cab of the truck, and then back at me. He was scrutinizing every detail.
My mom walked out of the store, bag in
hand, looking very confused. I laughed nervously, “Hi.”
“Excuse me ma’am, I need to see your
ID,” the officer said to my mom. She produced her driver’s license and he
scanned it quickly, explaining his reason for questioning her.
His radio buzzed. The dispatcher relayed
that our IDs were clear and my mom’s truck did indeed belong to her, with no
warrants out for either of us. He nodded and handed the ID back to her with a
quick smile, and then spoke to the dispatcher. “Not the suspect.”
With a quick look in my direction, he handed
me my driver’s license, “Thank you. You can go now.” And suddenly they were all
gone.
I climbed in the truck, wide-eyed. My
mom stared at me. What was all that
about?
“Oops.”
It wasn’t the big, dramatic,
super-hero saving the day event that we see in the movies. I still don’t even
know much about what happened that day. I didn’t get caught in the cross-fire
between the police and a bank robber on a shooting spree. I just got caught up
in a story that only made the breaking news on the radio because the police
were searching for a man with an empty checking account. Maybe they’re right.
Maybe my life is too exciting, if you can call it that.
But, hey I had a story to tell that
involves a serious lesson learned.
If you want to stay out of trouble,
mind your own business.
