Another day in Paradise
Weather-wise, yesterday was interesting. The radio warned of freezing rain although I could see that the temperature hung just above the freezing mark which made the snow/rain mixture fall in fat clumps and then collect on the road as huge slushy puddles. Despite the wetness and the greyness, it was still pretty warm for the time of year (if you call minus 15 warm), so I decided to bundle up somewhat and walk to the library anyway - I'm researching a book and need information on the British Monarchy.
Walking down narrow sidewalks that border the deep roadside puddles created by the rain made me realize that most people are essentially decent, and try to avoid soaking pedestrians with the huge fans of water created by driving too close to the curb, but there are always some...a silver Gran Prix comes to mind.
Arriving at the library, I felt invigorated - walking in through the library doors though immediately caused me to start overheating though so I shed my many layers, and got to work locating the material I needed. You'd think British history would be a breeze to find, but it's not. I wasn't really after the granular level of detail offered by most history texts. A 1000 pages for Queen Elizabeth II is too much; she's barely 70 years old! I was looking for something more concise - two pages to cover British history from 47BC to present, I just needed the high-notes for background. I ended up finding three books in the adult section with nice and brief timelines, and a couple of juvenile books with decent descriptions of life in the middle ages. I'll bet many researchers never give the juvenile section of the library a second thought, which is their loss because most juvenile material comes with pretty pictures.
Walking home, I decided to take another route down Black River road instead of Dalton Road, hopefully with less automobile traffic to potentially splash me and my books. But after only a few hundred meters along this new route, I realized that this road was even busier than Dalton Road was. It was so bad the sprinkling of white snow over the sidewalk in front of me was peppered with the gray/black spray of cars that had already come by. You could see the effect made its way well-beyond the edge of the sidewalk. Huge puddles flowed against the curb just inches from my feet. It was only a matter of time before I was drenched by some slack-jawed local-yokel. I decided to move across the road placing myself directly on the road between the puddles and the oncoming traffic. This turned out to be very effective because now nobody could splash me unless they hit me as well. There was lots of room for both of us -- cars and lone pedestrian, and I kept one eye on oncoming traffic to make sure we all understood the new temporary rules of sharing the road.
Presently I was able to turn onto Queen street, a long straight residential road which has much less traffic than either Dalton or Black River. It takes about 10 minutes to walk it's length. Though there was a sidewalk, I stayed in position on the road and facing oncoming traffic (of which there was none) and simply cast a quick glance backwards when I on occasion heard a car behind me just to make sure they were not coming right at me.
The 4th car started all the trouble. I cast my glance back at it and then proceeded forward. Resolutely forward, I'm sure I was picturing myself as resolute in my minds eye. But as the car came up behind me, I heard the pitch of the engine deepen - the car was slowing down. As the driver pulled along side of me, she leaned on the horn, which very nearly made me jump. She was about 45 years old, glasses, overweight and single judging by her looks. She was also screaming profanity at the top of her lungs. Something about "I should get off the road", and "do I think I could win an impact contest against a two ton vehicle?" The problem was, she stayed on the horn the for the entire diatribe. It was some little burgundy Hyundai, all the models look the same to me, and while a Hyundai horn isn't the loudest thing I've ever heard, the long sustained beep was pretty jarring on the nerves. So there I was still walking along, with this little car driving slowly beside me with it's horn going, and with the chick inside screaming at me so hard the car was rocking from side to side.
Now, aside from their more obvious uses, I generally believe most people to be utterly useless, and those who know me know that I have a whole toolkit for dealing with idiots like this. But lately I have been suffering from an as-yet-undiagnosed chest?/heart?/lung? condition, and was on this walk simply to calm my nerves about the whole thing, so in order to spare myself, I decided to behave in an uncharacteristic fashion just this one time and just smile and wave as if I didn't understand English. I don't think it really mattered because she simply let off the horn and drove away still screaming.
I still don't think the next part was necessarily a mistake on my part. I moved into the middle of the road behind her and gave her the finger. Except I was wearing big oversized mittens so it simply looked like me gesturing skywards, which in retrospect probably looked pretty retarded I guess. Anyway, as soon as I did this, I saw her brake lights come on and felt instant regret. I waited for the reverse lights to come on (and the horn) but they never did. As I came closer to her I could see she was talking on a cell phone. As I came up along side of her (me up on the sidewalk now) she simply gave me a nasty look and drove away. Weird. Two minutes after that it all started to come clear for me. A York Region police cruiser pulled up along side of me and two cops got out.
Let me take a moment to share an observation with you. I've been all over Canada and the U.S. I've lived in Europe. I've been to Africa. I've passed through Spanish slums and Moroccan markets, and even lived on the West Island in Montreal but nowhere in the world are the police more insolent, arrogant, and corrupt than they are in the Region of York, Ontario.
Now, on the rare occasions where they actually do it, cops have their job and they can keep it. In between donut shop runs, they sometimes have to deal with dangerous and unsavoury situations and people, some of them even more dangerous and unsavoury than the cops themselves. In a way, I can kind of understand the roots of police corruption. I mean, let's say you are a young man, teenaged, horrified at your stunted genitalia that refuses to grow to a size even approaching that of all of your peers around you in gym class. On top of that humiliation, you are sexually awakening and growing more confused by the moment as you find yourself attracted not only to women, but increasingly to men, animals, your own mother, and large protuberant fruits and vegetables. With your IQ test scores labeling you as clinically retarded, it's only natural that you would be inclined to grow a moustache, strap on a gun and a York Region badge, and go beat up faggots like me during slow days on "the beat", right? Except I've been through this with York Region cops before, and I didn't do anything this time, because let's face it, I AM getting too old for this crap. Back to the story...
Usually for the first few moments after a cop gets out of his cruiser, you can't really get a bead on him, so you tend to stop what you are doing, turn to face him or them and then sort of examine them as they approach. I like the more mature cops, around 50 or so. Not only are they the only ones left older than me, but they've got less to prove, they are not so much hostile anymore as they are bureaucratic, and I figure that there are worse things in life than bureaucracy. But these two looked to be all of 20-years old, one tall, one short, and both with steroid muscles and acne. Dammit. They greeted me first,
"How're you doing today?" they said in unison - unintentionally.
"Good." I replied.
"What happened here?" tall one asked. Crossing his arms.
"Nothing!" I said sounding guilty as hell of something.
The short cop walked around behind me as the tall one kept asking me questions, which meant I couldn't turn to face them both. I hate that. "Were you walking on the road?"
"Did you speak to anybody?"
"Did you have an altercation?"
I said "No. no. no." regaining my composure. Tip for you when talking to the cops. Never volunteer information. Answer as precisely as possible. The short one took up position next to the tall one facing me. Immediately, the tall one went back to his cruiser and picked up his walkie-talkie.
The short cop leaned in close "You put a pretty big dent in her car."
Instantly alarm bells went off. These guys were here barely two minutes and came from the opposite direction. There's no way they could've seen her car - and I didn't touch the car!
I-I-I never touched her car! I stammered which was a mistake. He hadn't asked me a question. He sneered then.
"So you did have an altercation?"
"Well, yes...I mean no. I mean it was her "altercating" with me, I didn't even say anything."
"Did you threaten her? What's in the bag? (my knapsack) Can we see what's in the bag?"
I figured at this point, I was about to be arrested and searched. I've been married before and it didn't end well. Who knows what my psychotic ex-wife has dreamed up over the last 8 years. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a warrant out for my arrest. I was also getting pretty pissed off. Short of the mittened gesture to that stupid bitch in the Hyundai, I didn't do a single thing wrong. I couldn't believe I was about to go to jail for this. Shaniqua and the kids were at home expecting me and it was Friday. If I was arrested, I know the cops would sit on me until Friday evening, after the court system closes for the weekend. I wouldn't even see a phone until Monday morning. My family would be worried sick.
I said, "No. You cannot see what is in the bag." Man, it was just a bunch of library books.
Shorty tensed up. Why not? If we arrest you, we'll get to see in there anyway, so why don't you just slip it off your shoulders right now, and show it to us?"
"Look," I said, "What are we talking about here? Are you interested in the bag, or what happened with that stupid idiot 5 minutes ago?"
As I spoke, Shorty took me by the arm and led me back across somebody's strip of lawn towards the cruiser. If it was my property and I was looking out my window seeing this moron cop walking people all over my lawn, I wouldn't be too happy. But I let him take me, and I trod carefully so as not to damage the soft grass under the snow. And stupidly, I got pissed off and kept talking.
"I mean at this stage it doesn't matter if it's automatic weapons in my knapsack."
That made both cops stop dead. I think even the birds stopped chirping.
After a moment, I decided that the best thing to do would be to pretend I hadn't said what I just said. So I followed it up with: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get going!" The cops would just have to let me go or arrest me right then and there.
Honestly, I heard them before I felt them. The bullets whizzing past my head. They were shooting at me! All of a sudden my arm went hot and numb. I'd been shot! I turned in slow-motion, raised my hands up before me and screamed "NNnnnoooooo....!!!!" in the high-clear sing-song voice of my 6-year-old daughter. I definitely wet my pants in slow-motion too, collpasing to the ground screaming: "I want to live, I want to LIVE, dammit!". The Stockholm syndrome set in then, and I offered to service the two cops twice nightly from now on in exchange for my life.
No seriously.
Honestly, I heard them before I felt them. A slight breeze on the back of my neck, then the sounds of huge huge rotor blades washing over me. I turned and saw an Apache attack chopper - fully armed and piloted by my wife sweep over us and point its nose at the two stinking pigs. The chopper's twin 30MM M230 chain guns with depleted uranium rounds opened fire and literally shredded those two and their car more or less instantaneously. I I looked down at my Rolex Oyster Perpetual and discovered that I had inadvertently triggered the homing beacon. I looked up and saw Laquisha giving me the thumbs up, the thumb reminding me of the quick-sex we had last night. The kids were there too, holding their Hydra 70 (2.75 inch) rockets that are lethal against a wide variety of targets. I looked to the right and saw a pink elephant mounting a Hyundai. I looked to the left and saw the remaining hits of acid in my hand...oh, that explains it....
No seriously.
Honestly, I heard them before I felt them. The sound of the little cop coming up behind me to arrest me. As he placed his hand on my shoulder, I stepped back, turned slightly and planted my elbow precisely in his voice-box. Three times. Moving forward just a bit, I extended my forearm and chopped him across his nose, splintering the bone into a thousand pieces. Before he could fall, I turned to face him, then fully reached forward to either side of him and pulled his nightstick with my left-hand and his service revolver with my right, which I then pointed at cop number two, who was so stunned by all of this he hadn't reacted yet. Hoping for mercy, he dropped his radio and put his hands up, which I did appreciate so I only shot him in the belly. I couldn't help but think that all that time spent watching the Bourne Identity really paid off!
No seriously.
Cop #1 spun me around and punched me in the belly - hard. I spit up a little chocolate instead of blood because after all, I'm part-German! (say it with a gay German accent) Then both cop 1 and cop 2 two start beating on me, but despite their furious attack it doesn't hurt too much, but make no mistake, it does hurt. Then I wake up. I'm on the sofa. My son is head-butting me in the belly and my daughter is pulling on my ears and hair. It never happened! I'd fallen asleep and after a time, the kids went wild. I looked over to the chair and there was Laquisha, still sitting and watching Oprah, slowly filling her front-hole with chocolates; a thin stream of drooly chocolate running down from one side of her mouth to the floor...just as I left her. I batted the little half-breeds away and threw a remote at Laquisha's head - and missed. All was right with the world.