Times in which you´ve been lucky in escaping trouble.

In My Humble Opinion
1

To the Mods: I aware that talking about Drugs is a shaky line in the forum. I am only going to mention “soft drugs” and I in no way encourage anything that can get people in trouble with the law and can cause certain people health issues.

This one time me and friend (about two years ago) rolled a joint inside a cigarette. Being that my university was very small, we decided to smoke outside in a fairly empty street. Since it was night time, we figured there should be no problem.

So me and my friend start walking outside in the side walk and lighting up. We´re already quite stoned and a bit paranoid. We see a few cars slowly pass by us be mostly ignore them.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a car that is moving way too slowly. Both me and my friend have an eigth in our pockets. The car keeps slowing down, and I think I notice more than one color in this cars design, as I avoided looking directly at it.

I was scared out of my mind and I asked my friend (in a whispering tone) “Is that a cop?!?”. He says “Yeah, but keep walking…shit”. The car then stops towards a grassy area next to the side-walk and turns in such a way that the headlights are pointing towards us. I´m thinking to my-self “Great, here goes, a fine possibly some jail time, depending on the cop and a warning to the university.”

However, we kept walking completley normaly, as if we were just smokin a cigarette, we were not going to run, and we were not going to behave in a weird way until we were certain the cop was getting out of the car, something which looked more likley every second.

Just when I though the cop had turned of his engine and was about to open the door, I see him put the car in reverse, and turned away and drove off.

:eek:

I had no idea wether we really tricked him into thinking it was a cigrette, because it did look like one. Or maybe he though it wasn´t worth the trouble.

Either way my friend and I both felt very, very lucky that day.

Anyone have any stories in which you´ve been lucky in escaping trouble of any kind?

2

Yeah my story’s quite along the same lines…

I was in college and was smoking pot more regularly than I’d planned. My friend and I had bought a bag, and I kept some in my dorm room. I had to get my own rolling papers but the only ones I could find were tacked on a bag of loose tobacco at the gas station, so I had that too.

Normally I would smoke uhm…“safely” with some precautions from keeping any scents from wafting into the hallway. Especially since my RA lived right across the hall. I didn’t have a roommate.

But one night I was just particularly upset about stuff. I had a hard time socially in college. So I got up out of bed, flipped on the lava lamp, put a CD on and rolled one.

I was sitting there crying and getting stoned, and there was a knock at the door. Shiiiiiit! I don’t know how, but in the seconds it took me to stash the stuff and open the door, I had both written my future as “Lifetime A+ student gets kicked out of local university for drugs” and come up with a plan to save my ass.

It was security at the door and they said the RA had called them because she smelled pot. And there I was standing in the doorway at 2 AM with my face all red and eyes all puffy.

In my hours of boredom, I had managed to read the Student Handbook and knew that they were not allowed in my room and I could say “no” if they asked. So I did not invite them in. Normally I would have been all “omg yes I am so depressed and I am smoking pot and I suck!” but somehow I managed not to cave.

So I gave them a line about how I had run out of cigs and had rolled a cigarette using shitty old loose tobacco and that must have been the smell. They asked to see a butt from said cigarette. I said ok, turned around, went to the ashtray on my bed and…actually found a butt from when I had rolled a cigarette! Woohoo!

I showed it to them, they smelled it (it obviously did not smell like pot) and they said OK and left. That was that.

Now, I am neither a habitual liar nor a habitual pot smoker. It was some sort of magic that I managed to get away with both that night. My life would have turned out hella different had that not been the case.

I still feel guilty about it, 11 years later. But that’s my story!

3

In my teens and early 20s, I had experiences with sex and drugs that ended much better than they might have.

But I also had a near-miss with disaster on the high seas in 1988.

I went out with three SCUBA divers in a small motorboat to a remote pair of islands in Micronesia. We had a local driver operating the boat who spoke no English.

I only snorkel, and so I paid no attention to the divers’ plans; I just splashed happily into the bathtub-warm waters while the three divers plunged into the spectacular depths beneath me. I amused myself for a while swimming through their bubbles on the surface, but eventually let them disappear.

I was then totally alone in a very, very big ocean. Getting uneasy, I decided to go back to the boat, which was no longer visible. The tide had turned, and because I was in a channel between two islands, the current was extremely strong. It was exhausting to fight it in order to head back toward where I assumed the boat was, based on underwater reference points that by pure luck I had happened to note.

Eventually, the current against me was so strong that the only way I could head back was to grab on to the coral and pull myself forward with my hands - a real no-no environmentally, but I would have been swept away otherwise.

I had almost no landmarks. The waves weren’t THAT choppy, but the two islands we were between were just flat atolls. Only one anomalous tree poked significantly above the waterline - it was all I could see, and so I kept heading for it.

I eventually made it back to the anchored boat, and hauled myself in, exhausted - awakening the startled boat driver in the process.

He immediately gunned the engines and followed the current out for half a mile or so … where it turned out the three divers were waiting uneasily for him, as he was long overdue.

I had not realized it, but the 3 divers were drift diving (my bad, I should have paid attention) and the deal was, we would all follow the current and then the boat would come after us in an hour.

But since the boat driver fell asleep, everyone was swept farther and farther along with the currents, wondering where the hell the driver was.

Because I went back and awakened the driver, no harm was done. Still, I shudder to think what might have happened to all four of us if I had not felt a spark of unease and battled my way back.

4

I have more of these stories than I care to admit in a public forum, but I’ll tell my favorite, as I am convinced that this is the smoothest I’ve ever been:

I’m in high school. I’ve just bought my first bag o’ weed, and it’s in my pants pocket. Yes, I was very dumb about some things then. Everything’s well and good, until gym class. Someone has been smoking cigarettes in the locker room, so the gym teacher lines us all up and makes us pull out our pockets to show that we don’t have any smokes. Oh. Shit. So, when it’s my turn, the bag of weed is in my hand as I pull my pockets out. All clear. Phew.

Okay. One more. My friends and I would shoplift from Wal-Mart on a regular basis. We would never have stolen directly from a person, or from a mom-and-pop type store or anything like that, but it still isn’t one of my proudest “accomplishments”. One day, I had a bad feeling about it. Mostly, I was just way too high, and paranoid, that we’d be too high to do it properly. So my friends took plenty of loot, while I just kind of hung out. On our way out the door, sure enough, security stopped us and took us to the back room. The security guy was a pompous little bastard, and lectured us for quite some time. He targeted me the most, it seemed, telling me I was just as bad as my friends and in just as much trouble, even if I didn’t steal anything, but he’s sure I did, and the police would find it, and I’d be in even more trouble blah blah blah. He really was quite a horse’s ass about it, much more than necessary. He told me I would be going to juvy right along with my friends. Well, the police officer and my father arrived at the same time, and walked to the back together. It turns out that my dad knows the cop, and they had been chatting about me. Right there in front of the security ass, the officer gives me a lecture of his own, on how good it is that I resisted peer pressure, and how my friends should be more like me, and how I’m a good kid. My friends of course know better, and are glaring daggers at me, along with the security guy. I left with my dad, and my friends went to the juvenile detention center, which was about 45 minutes away from where we all actually lived. My parents were pissed, but it was not the shitstorm it would have been if I were facing charges, not by a long shot. I have not stolen anything else in the 10 years it has been since that incident, so I think I learned my lesson: don’t be a jerk. Nice people don’t steal.

5

In high school, I drank as frequently as possible. It wasn’t all that much, but I was a particularly stupid and thoughtless teenager, so the consequences could have been devastating.

Once my brother had stayed after school for a club meeting. I went off with a friend and got plastered with a capital P, then came back to school laughing and staggering around. My brother made me sit down and shut up until our ride came.

Another time I brought some brown liquor to school in a Coke bottle. Nothing happened that day, but the very next day, the dean came and got me out of class because a teacher had reported to him that I smelled of booze. The dean searched my locker and my purse but all he found was one of those empty velvet bags that came with bottles of Crown Royal. I did still get in trouble for the blank hall passes he found in my purse, but since my dumb ass could have been expelled, that was a very lucky day.

6

I was only 17 at the time so spare me any criticisms about drinking and driving. I was over at a friends house and we nearly polished off a fifth of Jack Daniels. I obviously was in no condition to drive but I had a 1 am curfew.
Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to take a 90 degree turn at around 40 mph in a 1967 Chevy Impala, not a good idea. I ended up in a ditch and someone passed by and offered to call the police…crap,crap,crap. I slurred something about calling a tow truck. He said he would but before the tow truck showed up here comes a police car. I knew I was so screwed.
I don’t remember much about the conversation with him, he gets on the radio and soon after another police car shows up…I’m thinking I’m so going to jail. It was a Friday night and maybe they had better things to do or something. All four of them just started shooting the shit about whatever while the tow truck arrived.
They just ignored me the whole time :dubious: . No field sobriety test, no nothing.

The tow truck arrived about 10 minutes later and yanked my car out of the ditch, I payed him and he was gone. I’m thinking ok, this is when the hammer comes down. Nope. One of the policemen came over to me and said that they would follow me home. I mumble a thanks and he folllowed me until I pulled into the driveway and then left.

Through bleary eyes the next morning I was dreading what kind of damage I did to my car and facing the wrath of my father. If you’ve ever been on a bender and wake up with a WTF? moment the next morning, you will know the feeling I had looking over the car. It was parked perfectly in the driveway, yeah there were a few scratches on the door and front quarter panel but it really wasn’t very obvious.
I’m pretty sure I used up all of my karma in that one night because my life since has kinda sucked. :wink:

7

Pot in your pocket? Amateurs! We were smart. We stuffed our bags of weed down the front of our pants, or “down our balls”, as we called it. We figured that no macho cop would ever check there.

So one day I came home, totally Buzzard City (as we called it – we had some strange expressions), and my mother called me down into the basement. I told her I’d be there in a second (I wanted to put my stash away), but she told me to get down there “right now, young man.” She was doing laundry and wanted to wash the very pants I had on. Right now.

That wouldn’t have been so bad, except I was also smuggling a pack of cigs. The thought of standing before my mother in my tighy whities, displaying a big rectangular dick did not appeal to me in the slightest. I told her I’d run upstairs, change pants, and bring my current pair back down to her. Nope. RIGHT. NOW.

Feigning modesty, I hid behind the wall next to the stairs and took off the pants. I put my stash and cigs on the steps out of her sight, then handed her the pants. Then, half naked, I grabbed my contraband and ran upstairs, hoping to hell I would run into my father on the way.

The perfect crime!

8

Oh have I got a great one!

When I was in High School in Los Angeles, I was a bit of a jerk and had equally stupid friends. We had the bright idea to steal some industrial sized fire extinguishers from an office building under construction, empty them out, and refill them with water. These are the large silver models that can be unscrewed and refilled, then charged up with the air re-filling thing at any gas station because they have a standard car valve stem. Since the extinguishers were stolen, we decided to scratch off the serial numbers.

So, what do we geniuses do next? We go out spraying random people on the street with high pressure water and film it with a friend’s video camera. At one point, we pass a guy getting into his car, and we stupidly decide to nail him. His response? Why he gets very pissed off and gets in his car to chase us. Our response? Why we blow through the Stop Sign about 100 feet down the steet. And of course, there was a cop on the opposing street who witnessed the ENTIRE THING.

The cop turns on his lights and pulls us over and the guy who was about to chase us stops, laughs at us getting nailed, and drives off. We are shitting apples because we 1) blatantly ran a stop sign in front of a cop 2) after assaulting some random guy with water (which the cop saw) 3) with stolen fire extinguishers and 4) with our own video evidence of the crime we just committed on my friend’s video camera along with a dozen others that the cop didn’t witness.

The stars were truly aligned that day because the cop walks up asks for the license, registration, and proof of insurance, which we have, and then asks “And just what the hell do you guys doing?” Without missing a beat, my friend says “We’re just out squirting our friends, officer”. He then asks where we got the fire extinguishers and my friend, once again with nerves of steel, says “Oh they’re mine. I bought them at a swap meet last week”. The cop says “well I did see that guy you just sprayed laugh when he drove off, but you guys just make sure I don’t catch you squirting anyone else. I’m going to let you off with a warning” :eek: :smiley: I’m pretty sure if he had asked to see my friend’s video camera and watched the footage, we would have been arrested. That was truly a magical moment…

9

I looked like a long haired freaky person in my early 20s - got stopped at JFK customs coming from the UK and my bag turned upside down and emptied on the floor. Guy rummaged through and found a cig rolling machine I used for joints (I know, they’re teh lame, but I wiz only a part time potheid). I swear the thing reeked of weed; but he just gave me a ball-breaking lecture on how I didn’t want to be caught with the wrong type of cigarettes in some parts of the USA. Then pack this shit up kid and get out of here.

Funny thing was at the time I thought the guy was being a total cunt. Now I look back and realise how nice and avuncular he was not to have fucked me right out of it on the next plane back to England.

10

One day I was out surfing and I was waiting out just at the break for some good sets. There was a bit of a lull, so my mind went off wandering. Eventually, I came back to reality and thought to myself that it had been a pretty long time since a rideable wave had come by.
It immediately became obvious to me that the lull was no more; during the lull, when I wasn’t being pushed into shore by the swells, I had drifted out about 20 yards. I could clearly see other people about 20 yards ahead of me catching plenty of waves now. I began to paddle inland to try to get back up to the break. After several minutes of paddling, the shoreline only looked farther away. At this point I realized I must be stuck in some kind of rip current, but I conveniently forgot the advice about swimming parallel to the shore when caught in a rip current. I began to panic, and paddled like a madman for the shore.
I still don’t know how I did it, but after half an hour of intense paddling, I finally made it back to the break. By this point I was gasping, panting, and heaving like a professional porn star. Once I felt the swells catching my board, I collapsed on my stomach and let the waves carry me in. I met up with my friends on the beach and found out that they had lost sight of me almost 45 minutes ago and had been quite worried.

My hometown has a reputation for the incredibly obnoxious police force. I live in Georgia, where most fireworks are prohibited. Fortunately, a friend and I had stocked up on a recent trip through Alabama. On the 4th of July, this friend and I grabbed our bag of pyrotechnic goodies and went over to my neighborhood pool’s parking lot, since it is a fairly large, open area suitable for setting off low-grade explosives. We’re having a grand old time shooting fireworks off, when we happen to glance a car at the top of the long driveway leading down to the parking lot.
Our level of caution goes up a level, but when we see the lights on the car turn off (and it’s about 12:30 A.M at this point) alarm bells start ringing in our heads. My friend grabs the bag of fireworks and takes off in one direction, while I take off in another, holding the very large firework I was just on the verge of lighting. The firework in my hand is about the size of a dinner plate, and in big letters it proclaims itself “The Wailing Wheel.” Talk about incriminating…
Since it’s against my nature to be wasteful, I wasn’t about to toss this firework as far as I could hurl it, so denying any involvement with fireworks wasn’t going to be well received. I sprinted around the neighborhood tennis court to the edge of some very dense woods and drop down into a small ditch like I’m in Vietnam.
As I’m lying there, I can see the cop come around one side of the tennis court, flashlight leading the way. I can’t believe my heartbeat didn’t announce my presence like a battle trumpet. Eventually I see him turn around and walk back around the front and down the other side of the court. For whatever reason, he didn’t ever walk around the back, where he surely would have found me on the ground. After I saw him get back in his car and leave, I sprinted for all I was worth back to my friend’s house, where I met up with him.

11

In my younger days, I used to work for a company that hired some really shady guys as truck drivers and heavy labor (most of them had long criminal records)…this was in the '80’s and the company was in the entertainment industry and had there was a pretty intense corporate drug culture with lots of open use of not-so-soft drugs…we spent a lot of time at the bar,too.

So one evning after work I am drinking into the wee hours and leave with two of driver / lifter ex-con types whom I had absolutely no physical or romantic interest in. They decide that the three of us should drive to a deserted spot that they knew of on the bank of the East River near the Queensboro Bridge and take some not-so-soft drugs and I actually thought this was a wonderful fine idea and I agreed. The story pretty much actually ends there, we drove to the spot and did our drugs and then they drove me home…still I think this one one of the riskiest things I ever did.

I almost got electrocuted by a locked on full body shock from a grabbing defective vacuum cleaner with a metal handle while I was holding onto a steel structure with my other hand. Because the vacuum cleaner was on wheels I was able to kick it hard enough to pull it away., otherwise I might not be here now

12

Ah, to be young and stupid (very, very stupid) again.

A couple of friends and I used to go down to the bowling alley at the college student union. Many times, we would fill water bottles with vodka or gin, or maybe a Coke bottle with Jaeger. Not only was there no alcohol allowed on campus, we were underage. We thought we were brilliant. Being the driver, I would, of course, drink just as much as the other guys (stupid). I figured, two of us live within about a mile from campus, and the other guy likes to walk home anyway, so it’ll all be neighborhood driving except for the short stretch from campus into the neighborhood. Smart, right? (No. Stupid. Very stupid).

So we get hammered at the bowling alley. Toasted. Plastered. Three sheets to the wind. Kennedy’d. We’re heading back to the car, and we notice they left the gate to the softball field open. Awesome! Let’s go sit in the bleachers! Maybe we’ll knock over some tickets booths, urinate in some hilarious locations, scream obscenities at random passersby. Because we’re brilliant. Except for the part about one of those random passersby calling the campus police about the obviously drunk, abusive morons in the softball stadium.

So we leave, hop in the car, and I start driving slowly, straightfully (I know it’s not a word, but it just seems right for the situation) down the road. You know how they say the flashing red lights in the mirror will sober you right up? Not in the least. Scares the livin’ crap outta ya, though. So I pull over, and we start getting our stories straight. Friend No. 1 is the only one of legal age, so the story is he’s the only one who’s been drinking, kinda upset the Steelers lost in the playoffs, if they ask anything about it.

The guy walk up as I roll down the window. It’s a campus cop, and we’re still in his jurisdiction. “Son,” he says, “this car reeks of alcohol.”

“Oh?” I reply, adopting an innocent, confused expression. “It does?” Meanwhile, the other cop shines her light into the backseat, where Friend No. 2 is sitting with an open, empty bottle of Jaegermeister next to him on the back seat. I mentioned we were brilliant, right? The cop takes my license and registration back to his car for about 10 minutes, leaving the three of us to whisper back and forth in panicky tones about how he’s calling in the city cops, it wouldn’t take this long unless he was bringing in the real cops, we’re totally fucked, yada yada yada.

“Sir, could you please step out of the car?” came next. Well, this is it. I’m going to jail. I’m gonna get ass raped, my parents will disown me, my new girlfriend will drop me like a hot potato, doom doom doom dread dread dread…

So he does a quick sobriety test where he has me follow the tip of his pen. Says my eyes are a little jumpy, but I seem OK. Really? You don’t smell the five times legal limit of an adult on my freakin’ breath? No walking the line, breathalyzer, none of that? OK, sure. He says my insurance card has been expired for a couple of days, fix-it ticket, (as he’s saying all this, I realize I’m using the hood of his cruiser for support), sign here, not an admission of guilt, blah blah blah.

So he let me go. I went home, and we walked to Denny’s. Fuck you guys, I ain’t driving, it’s right there, were you not there just now? Are you crazy? We’re walking.

I still don’t know what the hell happened that night, because I really should have been in jail. I consider myself lucky, not because of the jail thing, but because I didn’t kill anyone.

13

Ah the 70’s.

My best friend and I used to cruise around in another friend’s '72 Datsun and smoke weed. One night we were on a dark road in the middle of nowhere, higher than Og, when flashing lights came racing up the road behind us.

The cop went by us without a second look. We couldn’t believe it.

14

When I was in the eighth grade, one day a group of us decided to cut class and go to this one guy’s house, Rob, who lived three or four blocks away from the school. When we got there, we needed something to do, and as a group of five thirteen-year-olds, we weren’t interested in playing board games.

Rob informed us his parents didn’t drink, but had recently had a party, so there was a cabinet full of booze that the parents didn’t keep track of. Perfect! So we proceeded to get hammered - all of us but Rob, that is. He didn’t partake, for some reason.

We had a grand ol’ time, making all sorts of noise - loud stereo, yelling & screaming, etc. A couple of hours later, towards the end of the school day, there was a loud knock at the door; one of my buddies peeked out the window and said “Fuck! It’s The Man!”

Like a knee-jerk reaction, three of us were out the back door, over the back fence into a neighbor’s yard, across said yard, over the gate to the front, and out on the next street over from Rob’s. Rob stayed behind with the fifth guy, who was still too wasted to move.

We started casually walking down the street, and about ten seconds later saw a cop car turn towards us from a side street. So we were off again, across the street and into another stranger’s backyard. We just kept hopping fences, going from backyard to backyard à la Ferris Bueller, until we wound up in a yard sharing its back fence with the school, where we waited until we heard the final bell ring.

As soon as it did, we hopped the fence onto campus and mingled with the crowd, as if we’d been in class all day. As we neared the office, there was a cop car in the parking lot, with the drunk guy passed out in the back, and a couple of cops, Rob, and the principal standing nearby talking. We hightailed it outta there and went home.

We learned later that when we fled, Rob answered the door and attempted to be as cooperative as possible, but too-drunk-to-move-guy started yelling “Fuckin’ pigs! You can’t come in here!” or some such; they were cuffed 'n stuffed.

I don’t remember what ever happened with those two over this; all I know is my other two friends and I never got caught.

15

All these stories seem to have some similar elements; mine is no exception.

During my college years I was driving my dad’s Pinto (!) home to Maine from Connecticut by myself–I was 19 and it was my first solo long trip. As I exited the Mass Pike in Auburn, I had to make a merge from the left onto a busy highway, and sped that little Pinto up for all it was worth to join the left lane traffic. I got pulled over. The Mass trooper examined my license and Dad’s registration, said, “Hey, you’re a Maine girl. I’m from Houlton (small far north town) myself!” I was scared shitless but knew enough to seize that opening and chatted him up about Maine, scary Mass traffic, etc., and he let me go without even a written warning.

Nothing much of a close call in that, EXCEPT FOR two details that I didn’t know about until I got home. The first was when I opened the glove compartment for something and my brother’s pot-encrusted pipe and baggie of weed fell out. It had been there during my traffic stop, yet hadn’t chosen that moment to tumble out in front of the nice Houlton-raised Mass trooper. The second was when my dad told me he just realized he had forgetten to re-register the Pinto and I drove the whole trip with a registration that was two months out of date. Whether the trooper was so mesmerized by my lovely innocence or just chose to give me a break, I’ll never know.

But I got pulled over for speeding, had marijuana in the glove box and an expired registration, and drove away only with some advice to keep to the speed limit.

16

Driving in a Pinto gets you many points. Christ, what a piece of crap that car was.

17

My brother built a hovercraft, and it caused me to fly.

It wasn’t big, an old vacuum cleaner motor mounted on a board over the innertube from a car tyre. The motor wasn’t strong enough to hold a person’s weight, not even mine and I was only about 10-11 years old. But my brother and I had fun playing soccer with the thing, kicking it back and forth the length of the lounge.

I accidentally stood on the cord on one return and the hovercraft sank gently to the floor with a fading hum. (You can see where this is going? Sure you can.) I grabbed the plug and stuck it back into the motor, ignoring my brother’s sudden protest.

Then I wasn’t leaning over in the middle of the lounge anymore. Somehow, with absolutely no time passing, I was kneeling right by the wall. The back of my head was bit sore, but I felt really really good.

My brother who, both before and since this incident, has refused to be even remotely impressed by anything his little sister could possibly do - spoke in tone of hushed awe; “You did a somersault.”

I refused to believe him until he pointed out the very faint dent in the wall (a little bit higher than me) where I had slammed flat against the wall after the electric shock had flipped me away from the plug.

Could have been seriously injured or killed. Just had a little bump on the back of my head and the momentary respect of my brother.

18

I don’t know that I’ve ever been so much self-destructively stupid as just completely absentminded to the point of self-endangerment. I can think of three times when I came to my senses in time to stay out of danger.

Two occurred in college. I’d gotten an apartment of my own about a mile from campus and usually walked to and from, even in the most hideous weather. One day, I walked from my apartment to the grocery store and took a street I hadn’t been on before. Never went on that street again as there was a nasty, run down apartment complex with a bunch of guys hanging out, drinking.

I’m walking on the other side of the street, and one of them leaves his buddy, crosses the street to reach me, can tell I’m getting a little freaked out by this, and then asks me if I know the time.

Very nervous, but not sure why, I mumble the time and keep going.

He follows.

Did I mention it was already dark? Or that the side of the street I was on had no houses, apartments, or stores, just a large, unlit, overgrown park?

Yeah, even my absent-minded professor persona has a reptile brain, and it started yelling at me.

“He is going to hurt you! Get the fuck away from him!”

I started breathing fast, and then I realized . . . I wasn’t scared. I was MAD. Who the hell is the asshole to screw up my evening when all I wanted was a half-pint of ice cream, a frozen pizza, and a soda?! Why, I oughta . . . .

I balled my hands into fists and started stomping, I was so angry. And the guy . . . he went away.

After that, I started walking to a closer grocery store. In fact, I found a dandy little short cut. My apartment complex backed up onto a very large field behind an elementary school, and there was no fence in the way. The grass was usually less than knee high, and it was about a five minute walk across the field, then around the school, and across the street to the grocery store.

Then one evening, it occurred to me as I walked back that, hmmm, there were no lights. There was nobody around. And should I trip and break something, there’d be nobody there to help me. I could probably yell at the top of my lungs - just like the school kids did all day long - and no one would pay any attention. So, I started taking the long way around.

Less than a month later, I saw a police report that a woman had been kidnapped from that field, and raped.

Probably about four years later, I was out of college in my first apartment in Dallas.

I had not chosen well. I’d decided on it because it was in my price range, and it was reasonably close to work. It looked fine, if a little run down during the day, and I didn’t see it at night until after I signed the lease.

One night, a friend dropped me off fairly late - probably close to midnight. My apartment did not face the parking lot. It was on the other side of the building. It didn’t face another building. It faced a fence at the backside of a grocery store. Also, not very well lit.

And I, slightly buzzed from a couple of beers and filled up on happy socializing with friends, bopped around on the sidewalk towards the stairs to my apartment.

Later, I thought back and realized that he must have stepped on the proverbial twig. At the time, all I knew was that I went from bop-bop-bopping to spin-crouch-grrrrrrrr fight stance. And there was a guy, out of nowhere, about five feet behind me. All by himself, wearing dark clothes, and he wasn’t one of my neighbors.

“Uh . . . nice weather,” he said, straightening up and smiling in a very nervous sort of way.

“Right. Nice . . . weather,” I replied.

I watched him walk all the way around me to the other side of the building and then I sprinted up the stairs to my apartment and locked the door behind me.

19

Reminds me of another one. My high school had a planetarium which I worked in for three years. Around the bottom edge of the dome were two rows of cove lights, one yellow and one blue, which were used to simulate twilight. The bulbs were like fluorescent tubes, about 18 inches long; you had to plug an end piece onto each end of the bulb, then seat the end pieces into the sockets in the track.* When pulling out an old bulb, half the time the end piece would come undone from the bulb instead of pulling free of its socket.

So, one day I’m changing a bunch of burned out bulbs: turn off the power on the main console, walk across the room (50 feet or so) to the ladder, climb up to the dome, pull out the old bulb, fish out the end piece(s) if necessary, assemble the new bulb, plug it in, back down the ladder and across the room to the console, power up, back to the ladder and up to make sure the bulb is working, back down, move ladder to next dead bulb… After a while I decided I was good enough at this that I could skip powering down the system, in order to save time. You’ll never guess where this is going…

Of course, I pulled out a bulb and one of the stupid end pieces remained in its socket. Rather than shutting down the system and pulling the piece out, I figured I could plug the bulb into the piece as it was. It would’ve worked, if I hadn’t lost my balance and stuck my index finger right into the end piece.

The shock I received was incredible, but amazingly, I didn’t fall off the ladder. My entire arm hurt like hell for the rest of the day, though.

After that experience, I was always very good about shutting down the system before changing bulbs.

*I tried Googling for pictures of what these things look like, no success. I’m guessing they don’t make them that way anymore. Or it could be that since I have no idea what they’re called…

20

Now, *that *reminds me:

I wired up this series of lights for a sign once. Would have been about 25-30 fluoros. Great job, I did. Very neat - so neat that the registered electrician who checked it didn’t notice that I’d wired it subtly wrong…

And, of course, I didn’t get in trouble because he was the registered electrician and he had checked it. I didn’t include it before, because I didn’t watch him turn the sign on.

Apparently the explosion was quite spectacular.