Here’s the second addition to Things that Never Happen to Other People.

About ten years ago my friend Andy had a party, and after a lot of sitting around drinking, we decided that we should take a walk outside to sober up a little. There were about 8 of us, and we ended up stopping and talking in front of a little grocery store, because there was light there.

Now, having had a bit to drink, I thought it would be fun to climb on top of the coke machine and look down over everyone, and having done this, another friend thought that was an awesome idea, and so we switched places. As we were chatting, suddenly THREE police cars come roaring up, and the cops all jump out and start yelling at us.

As I said there were eight of us, and we ranged in looks from punk (I was dressed entirely in black with a black leather jacket and combat books), to goth, to normal college dress (Andy was in jeans, white t-shirt, and sneakers).

After yelling at my friend to get the hell down, we start getting questioned as to what we were doing. “We’re just standing here talking,” we all replied.

“Why are you here?” One office in particular, Office Ford, was very hostile and aggressive towards us, getting in our faces to ask us questions.

“We were sitting around drinking and decided that we wanted to take a walk to sober up,” we replied.

At this Officer Ford decided he had us nailed, “How old are you?” he growled at me. “Twenty six,” I replied. He looked startled and then got in Andy’s face, “How old are YOU then?” “Twenty-two” was the reply. He then went after the goth chick who was dressed to look rather young, and got the response, “Twenty six.”

At this point the other cops had backed off, because they realized that we were really just innocently walking around the neighborhood, and although sitting on top of a coke machine was not the wisest thing to have done, we certainly weren’t harming anything. If anything, we were trying to be responsible in sobering up and not drinking till we were out of control.

But not Officer Ford. He gets right in Andy’s face and starts yelling about us walking around and climbing on things. And Andy, who doesn’t like authority even when he is sober, gets right back in his face exclaiming that we have a constitutional right to walk wherever we damned well please, whenever we please. Office Ford doesn’t like this at all, and goes into a tirade, which eventually ends with, “Damned kids! Bustin’ shit up! ‘S’why my insurance rates are so high!”

Luckily, the other offices realizing that we were neither kids nor “bustin’ shit up,” talk him back into his vehicle and leave us alone.

From then on, “damned kids, butsin’ shit up,” has been our “damned kids get off my lawn.”

I have no idea if Officer Ford is still around, but I do know that some time after the ‘bustin’ shit up’ incident, he pulled over a friend and scared him into an unreasonable search of his car (See: “Why would I steal an Eight Track?”). So I assume he was just one of those angry cops who doesn’t like kids and really had no business being a police officer in a college town.