Cop Baiting

When you sleep an average of 3 hours a night, it gives you plenty of time to get bored. Freed from the tyranny of a college schedule (I took classes as optional, more a diversion than a routine), my schedule morphed to a vampiric style: I'd go to bed just before dawn. I'd still be up between 7 and 8 out of some strange urge to be awake when classes were proceeding without me.

Nights became a personal playground. Understand I didn't drink or use drugs or have any urge to be around people who did, so I spent many hours on my own. With some exceptions, I was my favorite person to hang out with. But even true love needs a break from itself every once in a while.

Late at night, after the bars had closed, was a perfect time for me to leave my little digs and walk around the small college town. Everything was quiet and faintly glowing. The town was a good place for a friendly stroll in the daytime, but at night it became a fabulous terrain of hidden paths, odd corners, undiscovered angles and thinking space.

With the occasional troll. For even a nice troll is still a troll. Once a week, maybe more, I'd be stopped by one of the town's finest and be asked to identify myself. I always refused until I'd been given a valid reason, even if I knew the troll and had engaged it several times. (How different now, when you can be arrested and detained without reason, as Bushie the Cretin and his Suckturd Sycophants have decreed.) In the spirit of adventure (also known as "acting stupid") I'd inject inanity into the dialogue:

"You have a name, son?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"A three letter word."

Or:

"Why are you walking at this hour?"
"Cuz flying at night is dangerous," or "I tried crawling, but I hate getting dirty."

According to many, I should have been pistol-whipped by any number of Southern cops. I've only given you a few examples, but the "cop asking for I.D." scenario happened dozens of times over a two-year period and I never--never--complied without acting like a wit or openly challenging the process. Stupid? Granted. But I was well within my rights to not comply and as soon as any valid reason was proffered (report of a Peeping Tom, possible burglar in the area), I presented identification and answered simple questions.

It seems odd to me that what I thought was a nuisance then is actually a fond memory now, back to a time when one's normal activities were considered innocent and the idea of slapping police action on normality was insane. True, times have changed; the world is no longer what it was 20 years ago. But I leave you with this: Although I was seriously threatened several times, not once did any of those "dumb Southern cops" ever cross the line. They may have been pushed to the limits of their patience, but they remained guardians of the law. Any one of them had more integrity than the entire gang that currently seeks to treat us like the coward's "them." Yeah, I wasn't a terrorist. But neither are the vast majority of us.