When I was 16, I hung around with idiots. I am sure they could say the same of me. It was another summer night at 7pm. Not quite dark, not quite light. Some friends/idiots and I were parked in car on the side of the road by one friend’s sisters house. The guy in the back seat had a red water pistol. He kept firing all over the four of us in the car.
It began with the car racing at us, head blasting out rays of lightening. I hear, “What are the cops doing.”
My friend is still shooting a squirt gun in the back seat.
In seconds, with guns drawn, the officers approach. One screams, “Drop the gun! Put your hands behind your heads!” He stuck his revolver in the car’s back passengers window. With his other arm, he reached in and grabbed the squirt gun. “Get out of the car, one at a time! Now!” One by one the four of us exited the vehicle. “Against the car, stand there and shut up!” I was scared and pissed. The officer walked around us, patting us down. Then, he retraced his steps back, this time taking our wallets. His partner stood silent. He knew one of my friends and didn’t intervene. We stayed still. The other officer returned. “Anything in the vehicle you want to tell us about.” “No,” replied the driver. “We can look.” “No, nothing.”
Finally the other officer called him over. “Don’t move.”
They came back, checking the car for about 20 minutes. Then, they checked on our ID’s. The aggressive officer handed back our ID’s “You guys need to grow up.” He told us to leave and took the squirt gun.
He never asked what we were doing. There hadn’t been an armed robbery in Townsend for my entire life. Sure, we were breaking into my friend’s sisters’ house in the fading daylight while she was there and threatening her with a water pistol.
That week, the local paper wrote an article about the incident calling it, “An Almost Tragedy from Teenage Prank.” We were portrayed as sinister practical jokers with no respect for the law. Fake news!