In the last month leading up to the election, I received at least half a dozen automated calls on behalf of politicians or political groups urging me to vote for Mr. X because of his tough stance against hamster felching, or against Mrs. Y because she’s voted to raise taxes four thousand ninety seven times since she’s been in office. Because these phone calls were so annoying, I rapidly became conditioned to hang up the phone at the first sound of a recorded voice.
Sunday morning the cordless phone in my house began to ring. I answered it and heard a computerized voice start talking to me. “Will you accept a collect…”
<CLICK> was the automatic response from my fingers as my brain told them “automated voice, not important, hang up now.” Immediately afterward I thought “Hmm, maybe I shoudln’t have done that. I hope that wasn’t important.”
Fast forward to Sunday evening, when my friend Chester dropped by. The first words out of his mouth were “Did you hear about [mutual friend] Mark? He got arrested last night and just spent the last 20 hours in Harris County jail.”
Realization sets in… Shit! That must have been my friend calling me from jail, and I hung up on him! Then he spent the next ten hours in jail waiting for someone else to come get him out. FUCK.
Chester follows with the complete story. Apparently Mark and Mark’s friend Brad had been out at some wedding reception on Saturday night when Brad got pulled over because he had a headlight out.
When Brad responded “yes” to the question “Have you had anything to drink tonight?” the cop breathalyzed him, and he failed. At which point the officer arrested Brad and searched the rest of the car. He found some marijuana that was in the glovebox. He arrested Mark as well and charged them both with possession. (How does that work, anyway? If there are drugs in a car, can every occupant be arrested? I would have assumed only the driver, but I guess not.)
Brad, you dumbass! I pit you for A) driving drunk, B) driving drunk with drugs in the car and C) driving drunk with drugs in the car and only one working headlight.
I pit myself for hanging up on Mark when he needed bailing out, and I pit those loathesome autodialers for conditioning my cat-like reflexes to the point where I reflexively hang up on collect calls before I even hear who they’re from.
Gah! I felt so bad about it that I bought Mark a bottle of Crown to cheer him up/drown his miseries. (He’s never been arrested for anything so I imagine the experience was something of a shock.)