I would like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to the courageous men in blue who so graciously allowed me to take part in their UMass-Amherst “Alcohol-Free 2003” campaign last April.
It was about 9 a.m., and I left the comforts of my room to return a gym bag to a friend in Puffton. Granted, I must’ve looked suspicious as hell in my button-down polo shirt, Dashboard Confessional hoodie (or is it hoody? I never know), and an empty purple duffle bag with pink straps in my hand. So it’s pretty clear that the observant police officers in Green Lot made a mental note, “Suge Knight has entered the premises. Keep gun handy. Wait, I’m just a freaking cadet and can’t carry a gun yet. Maybe if I stick my hand in my pocket he’ll think I’m packing heat.”
I threw the bag in my car and tried to start it, but the battery was dead. So I asked the gentlemen if they could help me out with a jump, but they were busy protecting the parking lot and couldn’t help me out. You see, a white van was parked kind of crooked, so all four of them had to surround it and inspect it with their flashlights like it was one of those hidden 3-D pictures that I can never see. So I headed back to Emerson to round up some jumper cables and returned a few minutes later with two friends. That’s when it all went down.
We saw my friend Jay, a 21-year-old, and his friend already en route to the parking lot, so we joined them. He was carrying a Bud Light 30-rack that just so happened to contain 30 cans of Bud Light (all of them empty), to redeem at the store for $1.50. I know, what loser under the age of 40 who isn’t homeless actually does that? Jay does. But anyway, after a few minutes all five of us reached Green Lot, at which point all hell broke loose. We were swarmed by the Po. If there had been a door to break down, rubber bullets to shoot, or an attack dog to release, they would have. But it was all for good reason. It became clear that these knights in shining armor simply observed that, between the five of us, we were only a gun, a criminal record, and a set of balls short of busting a cap all up in their grills.
They had every right to ask Jay for his ID (I know, I used to watch Baywatch Nights) which they subsequently did. This guy had such an incredible cop voice too: so professional, so badass, so worthy of doing voiceovers for movie trailers. Jay politely complied, immediately giving verification of his age, as well as showing them that the 30 was … well, full of empty cans. So that should’ve been it. Case closed, time to go look for more illegally parked cars, right? Wrong. But again, what happened next was completely justifiable. I was clearly looking for trouble. Maybe it was my backwards hat. Maybe he caught a whiff of the Pepsi on my breath (I hadn’t brushed my teeth). Or maybe he recognized my face from one of those composite sketches down at the station. Either way, I totally deserved it.
The not-quite-an-officer-yet turned to me and asked for some identification. “We witnessed the hand-off, son,” he added. The what-off? This wasn’t football. There was no drug deal. But apparently I had “blatantly” handed the 30-rack, which had not yet magically had sex with itself to produce beer and was still empty at this point, to Jay to avoid being caught by Mario Lopez and his buddies from Pacific Blue. I denied the accusation and my friends confirmed my story. “You mean to tell me that myself and these three officers are wrong?” Damnit, he saw right through me. How could I, myself, me, know what I was doing? For all I know I could’ve been operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol … on the sidewalk … without a car. I was way too busy walking, talking, and being obnoxiously sober to be conscious of my own actions. They clearly had a better vantage point from the darkened parking lot 120 yards away.
Images of prison bars, dropping the soap, orange jumpsuits, and conjugal visits raced through my mind as I handed him my license. I came clean and told him that I was indeed only 20 and an RA from the building across the street. To my surprise, he relented and motioned to his cohorts to leave the scene of the crime. Victory. I had beaten the system, damn near gotten away with murder. So what did I do next? Jumped the getaway car and rode off into the night to litter and run red lights.
Matt Brochu is a Collegian columnist.
