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Linda L. Peterson
This month’s write and read was the best yet! My offerings are as follows: the first is the one I actually wrote for that night. The second one is the one that, after visiting,Dar said I SHOULD have written. Happy reading.
Lisa Marie Webb
Linda I don’t see your writing.
Lisa Marie Webb
Writing Prompt: Yes Mr./Ms. Policeman. Write about an interaction you have had with a policeman at some point in your life.
One of my favorite things to do is laugh. There is a clean comedy place online called Dry Bar comedy that spotlights various comedians. Well one day I was listening to a comedian I was not familiar with. I could hear the laughter of the audience and their interaction when he would ask questions. This particular comedian had dash of cynicism in his delivery. I remember having quite a chuckle as he began to retell an encounter he had one day as he was driving and suddenly saw the flashing red lights of the law in his review mirror. I chuckled as his eyes rolled up in his head and his face smirked as he told us about the conversation when the officer approached his vehicle. Quite normally, the officer inquired of the comedian, “do you know why I pulled you over?” The comedian commented, “why yes officer.” Then he said the policeman asked if he knew how fast he was going? His answer dripped with sarcasm as he said “why yes, you see they made these fancy little dials that give me all kinds of information…the only thing I didn’t seem to know is where you were hiding!” I could hear the chuckles and laughter of the crowd. I wonder if they imagined the look on the officer’s face the way I did if the comedian had truly said that. Can’t you just see the officer’s lips swing to the side in a no-nonsense smirk and his eyebrows scrunch like annoyed wriggly caterpillars above the eyes that shot an I-don’t-have-time-for-this glare at the comedian?
It made me think of my own run-in with a law enforcement officer. It happened to be Veteran’s day and I was driving home from a road trip. The day’s sun had been beating down on me through the glass of my vehicle and I was somewhat unnerved by a very large iron transport vehicle of some kind. It was brown with rust and swayed between the lines of our lane as it traveled in front of me. It made me nervous that kept swaying quite a bit. I wanted to escape from behind it but the lanes on either side seemed filled with drivers auditioning for the next sequel of the movie Fast and Furious! I could literally feel my car rock as they zoomed by! Due to the fact that I’d been run off the road by a big rig once while driving the highway in Europe, I don’t care to be in close vicinity with large trucks if I can help it. I imagined the driver of the swinging vehicle in front of me now. What is going on up there? I wondered if the cause was just the older truck being bombarded by the wind of other vehicles racing by it or if possibly it was rocking back and forth between the white lines because the driver was weary from driving too long without a break and fought the plague of droopy eyes that comes with focusing too long on the forward horizon?
In any case, I began to slow down so I could drop back and create a little more space between us as I watched my mirrors for an opening in the traffic patterns behind me. I finally saw my opening, swerved into the next lane, and gunned it so I wouldn’t get run over by oncoming traffic. Whew, I made it! I wanted desperately to pass the swaying truck and put mileage between us! Then I could get over to a safer position in a slower lane. You have to be kidding me! Just as I switched lanes and began making my way to the right, I saw the flashing lights of the law. I pulled to the side, secretly hoping he would pass me by on his way to somewhere else, like chasing one of those Fast and Furious imitators, but no such luck. My stomach sank. This is not the way I wanted to end Veteran’s Day. I sat quietly with my hands on the steering wheel, put my window down, and tried to remember all the rules of what to do if you get pulled over. Too bad at the time I hadn’t heard that comedian yet…because I surely could’ve heard myself saying “the only thing I didn’t know is where you were hiding, officer.” But of course I would never have said that…wink, wink.
Terry E Deer
“Yes, Mr./Ms. Police Officer”
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Someone’s outside, out in back.”
My roommate and I were living on James Island, on the outskirts of Charleston, SC. It was 1980 and I had my first professional job, my Masters of Library Science degree hot off the press. I was a children’s librarian at the downtown library, a story in itself. We had recently moved in and didn’t know our neighbors well. Who could be roaming around outside in the dark?
We had cause to be nervous. A former resident in the apartment next to ours had found a way through the attic space into our apartment and robbed the people who lived there before we did, or so we’d heard. There were no houses or apartments behind our row of townhouse flats. The woods began only a few feet from our little concrete patio. No doubt there would be people living there eventually: a road looped through the woods to indicate future development. At the moment, however, the road only made it easier for people who shouldn’t be there to find our back door.
My roommate listened. “I don’t hear anything. Do you want me to go look?”
“No! Don’t go out there. It could be anyone.”
All was dark and quiet now; perhaps I’d imagined it. I kept my ears pricked as we cleared the table and stacked our dinner dishes in the sink. Every few minutes, I glanced out the back window, but the darkness defeated me. All I could see was my reflection, pale and wide-eyed.
There! Was that a flash?
“Someone is out there,” I whispered. What do we do? Should I call the police?”
“Let’s see if we can find out what’s going on first,” she suggested. “Turn out the lights, and we’ll go upstairs. Maybe we can see something from the back bedroom.”
I double-checked the deadbolt on the back door. Locked. We flitted to the stairs, a dim glow from the streetlights out front lighting our way as we tiptoed up the steps and crept on hands and knees across the floor to huddle under the back windows. We could both see the narrow beam of a flashlight flicking back and forth through the trees.
My heart was beating at a fast trot, and I could feel the sick aftermath of an adrenaline rush. It seemed unlikely that anyone planning a break-in would advertise their presence, but what did I know?
We might have stayed there all night, crouched in the dark, waiting for the crunch of glass breaking in the kitchen window, while our cats prowled around us and puzzled at our strange behavior, but then a voice rang out from the woods. Did it say, “Halt, in the name of the law!”? No. Instead, we heard, high and anxious,
“Mieko! Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!”
And that’s how we met our friend and neighbor, Betty, who was just as crazy about cats as we were, and who was moreover one of Charleston’s finest. Hello, Ms. Police Officer!
(For those who are wondering, yes, she found Mieko, safe and sound.)