About 40 minutes into what became a nearly hour-long evacuation -- with me running back and forth, lugging boxes and Hefty bags from a solitary bedroom to the sidewalk, and getting my TV and stereo from the basement, my bikes from the garage -- one of the patrolmen stopped me.
He held up a credit card. “Sir, is this yours?”
“No,” I said, panting. “It doesn’t have my name on it. It has hers.”
“Well, sir, the family claims they found it in the hallway, and they believe it may have fallen from your pocket.”
“And what do YOU think, officer?”
“Hey, I’m just telling you what they said.”
First off, I would never, ever take something that wasn't mine. I wasn't raised that way.
And if I were that stupid, I wouldn’t take or break anything in that situation. Things were bad enough.
But let’s take this one step beyond: Say I were dopey enough to take it and it “fell out of [my] pocket”: It supposedly was found in the hallway just outside her first-floor door. She owns the house (her son lives rent-free upstairs). It’s her premises, of which said card never left.
I noticed that the card still had the sticker on it -- meaning it has to be activated through HER PHONE.
This is the kind of person I was dealing with. Couldn't even get the plant-the-evidence ploy straight. (If you're thinking "white trash," I would say you are right on the money.)
If I had the time and inclination (both of which I didn't, especially given the beat-the-clock circumstances), I actually could have taken that card from wherever it was and tossed it in the hallway, just for spits and giggles. Only I wouldn’t have considered it funny, not while I was losing 10 pounds hustling a ton of crap on a bum left arch.
See, here’s the thing:
If you’re gonna jerk someone’s chain, don’t pick a guy who has been a friend of law enforcement, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys his entire professional career -- cause he’s seen it all.
What’s more, given his standing in that community, he has to stop for every stop sign, feed every meter and not even spit on the sidewalk. So don't even assume the thought would even cross his mind.
Now that I’m in a safe, secure environment, I can only laugh at the lame-ass, bad TV attempt -- and feel a wee bit o’ pity for the smallish brains who thought it up.
Come to think of it, I had $1,000,000 in cash in an envelope in my nightstand that somehow disappeared, along with a ticket to Graceland, Michael Jackson’s autograph, and Mickey Mantle‘s rookie card.
Damn.
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