I'm succumbing to peer pressure and posting an entry from my archives. I chose this one because, well, it's one of my more infamous stories, and I told it to others today when the topic came up of illegal activities and the dumb-ass police. Especially given this whole hoo-hah about the cop who beat a 16 year old kid in Inglewood and who was caught on videotape. Dumbasses. Can anyone say "Rodney King"?

November 16, 2001: Stupid, stupid, stupid...
There is absolutely no explanation for the moronic act I pulled about 20 minutes ago, save only for the fact that while walking down Newbury Street earlier tonight, I looked in on the diners at T.G.I. Friday's and saw a girl I used to date (ending things was her decision, I rather liked her) sitting at a table with her new boyfriend -- thankfully, she didn't see me. But still, that's not really a justification.

Let me first preface this by saying that in Boston, pedestrians have right-of-way no matter what, which leads to interesting circumstances where they cross streets at any place and at any time, crosswalks or walk/don't walk signs be damned. So I was walking home from Poker Night at my friend's place downtown, and was crossing a divided road at an intersection. I saw the incoming traffic had a red light and there was no traffic on the street I was trying to cross, so I went despite the "don't walk" sign. I made it halfway across and stood on the median while a car coming against me made a right turn onto the road in front of me, then I proceeded to cross the rest of the road behind the car that had just turned. Guess what? The car that made the right turn was a cop car, and put on its lights and pulled over to the side of the road immediately after I made it across.

The cop jumped out of his car and started yelling after me, "Hey! Hey you! C'mere!" So I stopped and turned around and looked at him, and he said, "Do you realize that you just jaywalked? That was a 'don't walk' sign." I looked right back at him and said, "So? Do you realize that you just made a right turn on red without signalling or coming to a complete stop when your lights and siren weren't on? Some example you're setting."

Now, I don't exactly have the level of respect for the police that I should have, mostly because they pull stunts like that and seem to feel that because they enforce the law, they can skirt above it. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I immediately started mentally kicking myself and saying, "Stupid, stupid, stupid... you can think these kinds of things, but you can't say them." However, Fate was smiling on me because the cop just kind of thought for a second, scowled at me since I had called him on it and he really had committed the more grievous of errors between the two of us. Then he got back in his car and drove off, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief that he hadn't given me an absolutely huge ticket or something worse.

Oh, and I lost $1.50 at Poker Night.