cops and robbers

Well everyone's happy.
I'm kickin along here in Placerville, on my second day of fight-teaching to these high school kids. It's absolutely brilliant weather, warm but still fallish - the kind of weather that wrinkles the green from the trees, and fills up pumpkin patches.

But I digress. Last night I was in handcuffs surrounded by cop cars.

Joey too. But he didn't dig it as much, he rather gave those officers a not-well-received piece of his smart mind. Let me say this - I've never been in handcuffs before, nor have I had to put my hands on my head (which quick note here, if you do put them up there then decide to take them off to make gestures while you're speaking the cops will flip out. It's a riot) and they really weren't as uncomfortable as you'd expect. I mean, they aren't if you just let them rest there. In fact, on a hot night when everything else if fury and fire, the coolness of metal is almost relieving on your wrists. Cools ya down.

Ok, basically, as Joey and I were leaving Powell's (the only bar in town really, and Joey and I the ONLY people there) our old amigo Johnny Pacard leaned his head out of an upstairs window behind the belltower and called out "JOEY! MIKIE! Someone's breaking into my apartment can you guys go see what's going on?!?" Of course Joey and I being the superhero crime-fighters split and run around the building into the alleyways as fast as humanly possibly to catch the guy. We get behind, I scramble up onto the roof like a rocket ready to detain the perpetrator and I hear Joey below say (hesitantly) "Mikie the cops are coming," called, of course, by the same Johnny Pacard. Instantly I realized I was in a follyish position. What a silly goose, standing on the roof of a building looking for a criminal that would be standing on the roof of the building as the cops pull up. Of course. So I shimmy down quickly as the cops careen up, lights ablaze. They leap out yelling at us. And I'm actually smiling on the inside, putting my hands on my head, knowing how this is gonna end.

It ends exactly as I imagined. As the cop is unlocking my handcuffs and apologizing, he's telling me that he's mad at us because we weren't the criminals (Johnny of course had come out to straighten out the whole mixed-up scenario, and the cops contritely let us free), and he's very sorry for the inconvenience. I was trying to get a good look at his face to see if it was anybody I'd grown up with in high school, but the lights were either too bright or the night too dark.

Either way, 10 minutes later Joey and myself were standing outside his apartment reminiscing, mildly shook, mostly happy that the police force continues to confirm our suspicions that cops in small towns literally have nothing better to do than yell at innocent folks on a Monday night.


End of story. It's fight time kiddos

Mikie