Fond Memories

I remember one time, back when I was just barely old enough to get a drink in Nova Scotia, I was leaving a tavern with a good buddy of mine. There had just been a fight or something outside because we saw a bunch of people milling about and several policemen and a couple of police cars. We were talking about something important (whether Sabbath would survive post-Ozzy, or some other equally pressing philosophical issue of the day), and it was just a regular Friday night, so we didn't really pay much attention to what was going on outside the tavern.

Anyway, we're walking and talking, and we get about 200 meters from the tavern when, in mid-sentence, my buddy turns around and yells at the top of his lungs, "why don't you fucking pigs fuck of and go fuck yourselves!?" Now, although I was somewhat startled at the timing of this little outburst, I wasn't especially concerned about it, because a) back then that was the generally accepted mode of greeting to any and all police we happened to encounter, and b) I thought we were too far away for them to have actually heard it. We continued walking and conversing for a few moments...

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a police car comes screeching to a halt directly alongside us. I remember saying, "hope you ain't got no plans tonight," to my friend, as two cops jumped out of the car and moved toward us. My friend just shrugged, and as the police approached I started to feel a little uncomfortable. Justifiably, as it turned out, because when they came up to us they didn't grab my buddy, they grabbed me! And they didn't simply grab onto me, they grabbed me and hauled me directly to their car and threw me in the back. One moment I was standing on the sidewalk, and the next I was in the back of a cop car.

It's not often in my life that I've been at a complete loss for words, but at that moment I was dumbfounded. And even when, after a few seconds, I regained my wits, I thought, "what the fuck can I possibly say right now?" I mean, I guess I could have told the police that they had the wrong guy, this is a miscarriage of justice, it was my friend who said those mean things! Well, actually, I was kinda pissed off, so that's what I felt like saying. But of course I didn't. My buddy, in the meantime, was doing an admirable job of trying to convince the police that he was the guilty one, that they should be hauling him away. The cops were having none of it, however. Actually, my buddy was so clearly embarrassed by what was happening that I started laughing.

I was still laughing as they drove me away to the drunk tank. And really, what else was there to do?