Often times when one is bored, inventive ideas swirl about in the brain designed to shift the tides of boredom over to the side of fun. Now, fun is not always under the classification of wise, prudent, or legal.
One such instance took place several times a week. My friend and I, who lived in an apartment that faced a major street, would partake in a most unusual pastime. We would gather up a few bottles of beer, a cooler, and a couple of lawn chairs and take a journey. We would proceed onward to the cement median strip that divided and paralleled our street with the major street. We would set up base camp with our chairs, beer, and cooler, and sit during peak traffic hours and rate the women who drove by. This was accomplished by holding up a 1 foot x 1 foot cardboard sign displaying what we thought about the woman driving any particular vehicle. One side of the sign was a “1” and on the other side there was a “10.”
For weeks this went on, until the cops were notified by a recipient of an unfavorable grade (no doubt.)
As the cop rolled up, with red and blue lights flashing, we both saluted him with a toast from our beers-in-
hand “Greetings officer !”
Sternly, he explained “Do you guys have any idea that what you are doing is against the law?”
Naive, we both shrugged our shoulders and replied “We aren’t hurting anyone. And our house is right here.”
“You are not on your property” scolded the officer. “You are on city property !”
“If you don’t put the beer away and go home, I am going to cite you for possession of alcohol in public”
Barked the officer. “Besides, you are likely to cause an accident doing this” he continued to lecture.
We reluctantly obliged, but not before explaining that we had been doing this for quite some time and have only helped to make the drive home in heavy traffic a little less droll. Besides we have neither hurt anyone, nor caused an accident.
In response to that, several cars, who were partaking in the fine art of rubbernecking to see why there was a police car on the side of the road with lights all ablaze, crashed into each other. First one collision, then another, then another.
‘Oops.’
My friend and I looked at each other, then looked at the cop, and shrugged while stating “This never happened to US before. Of course, we use small cardboard signs, not flashing red and blue lights. Maybe if you left us to our judging this never would have happened.”
The only reason I feel the cop didn’t arrest us at that very moment for insubordination, at the very least was because after our little wise-crack, two more cars collided while trying to pull into the neighboring parking lot, causing the office to quickly tend to his self-inflicted duties and attend to the 6 car pileup he just created.