Straight Outta Bogota

I have never really been into rules. It probably has something to so with the fact that one of my parents still likes to end debates with statements such as "I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do, so just leave me alone". One of my earliest memories of my other parent is of them clenching their jaw in outrage in response to the Walk Sign before declaring "Nobody is going to tell me when I am going to walk", grabbing my hand, and leading me into oncoming traffic. They both just really want to be free.


As a result, I have never cared for people telling me what to do (which is surely why I was such a successful public school teacher).I have never had a great affinity toward authority. I've always thought that as long as I am not hurting anybody or breaking any laws you should just do you and let me do me. Even in elementary school I thought that the kids who went crying to the teachers were just cry babies who couldn't handle their own business. Didn't they get the memo? Nobody rats!


My feelings about authority only became worse after my arrest. In order to fully understand my feelings of outrage you must understand that it was a miscarriage of justice. After I explain a few things it will become clear why after my one and only ride in the back of a cruiser, I spent the rest of the summer listening to this CD 

and watching many, many episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard and developing a very deep and very real hatred for Boss Hog.

 Due to my high school's very strict discipline code and my own teenage neurosis upon graduation from high school I had consumed a total of 5 beers. I had never done drugs or spent much time with boys (which was not so much by choice). I didn't usually go to parties. If I did, I ended up doing the dishes. This was to distract my classmates from the fact that I was not imbibing. I spent a lot of time realizing that intoxicated high schoolers are really not that much fun to talk to when you are stone cold sober and have dishpan hands. 


Basically, I did absolutely nothing wrong except fail to clean my room and sometimes have a smart mouth (a condition I am still trying to cure). In short I was a nerd, a wet blanket, a stuffed shirt, a real Johnny No Fun. The only perk of which was never, ever getting in trouble. (I have a funny feeling I may have been having a little less fun than my amigos who spent their weekends doing keg stands and getting busy.)


Therefore, when I returned from my first year of college and my one year younger bestie invited me to a keg party in the woods I thought it would be funny. I had never been to one before and after a year at ZooMass I now knew a thing or two about drinking beer. However, our evening went horribly awry and the night ended with us standing in a holding cell with our hands handcuffed together with what I am pretty sure was a crack whore who was wearing a Ren and Stimpy T-shirt and a pair of unzipped jean shorts, or jorts. She informed us she was hiding pills in her "underwears". She then somehow managed to extract a half smoked cigarette from those underwears and smoke it. I felt like I was in the wrong place, not only because of all my years of rule following and sobriety, but because I knew tons of kids that did real bad stuff and they had never been forced to pose for a mug shot. 


However, what really made my blood boil is that at the time of my arrest I was not doing anything wrong. We had been waiting for the beer to arrive when we were arrested, there was no party happening at the party. We were sitting on a rock talking. They arrested us for trespassing and said we could all thank our friend's brother for this (who had some sort of argument with them the night before). It was all his fault because he thought he was so cool.


 These were not the words of respectable law man! These sounded a lot like the words of a jerk (which my cousin who went to school with my arresting officer confirmed that he in fact was) It was a miscarriage of justice! The charges were trumped up! The park where we were had closed 5 minutes before they showed up! You are not supposed to arrest a bunch of kids because you are mad at someone's brother (I think that they were just jealous that he actually was that cool)! I finally understood what those boys from Compton were talking about! All of my years of being a geek were totally down the drain. I had been booked! It was so no fair! I vowed never to watch another episode of this show again:

Although I have never that into rules, I don't actually do anything wrong. I realized at an early age that since I have terrible luck and an almost bizarre inability to lie, I wasn't really cut out for a life of crime. In addition to this, I didn't really enjoy my one trip to the pokey. The following day when I had to be arraigned with car jackers and prostitutes I felt pretty out of the loop(the bailiff asked my friends and I who were all 18 and wearing pretty Spring dresses if we were on a class trip) and felt it wasn't really my scene. 


Because of my feelings about Law and Order (not the show, ironically I really, really love that, especially the ones with Ice-T)I was surprised to find myself working with the 5-0 as part of my new job. Even though I am just there to teach them English, it just felt like something I would never find myself doing. I looked out into the classroom and looked at their feet and was like WOAH.

This photo is from the internets because I didn't really feel like it was a col time to whip out my camera and start snapping photos.




They were all actually really nice and not exactly what I expected. They were friendly and smiley and very interested in the workshop I was giving them. Some of them even made some goofy jokes. In celebration of Mother's Day they gave me a mug filled with chocolates (even though I explained that I was not a mother)and one of the officers played some sax solos, including Frankie's NY, NY in honor of what I claim is my home town (they seemed like the wrong crown for some kind of "I Am A Wandering Gypsy" spiel).


However, their language center is the same place where they train for other stuff. This is why I saw a group officers practicing how to load automatic weapons and another group practicing how to rescue important people from riots using defensive driving. I couldn't help feeling that it was a bad time to mention how hilarious I think Straight Outta Compton is or my feelings about Boss Hog. I just hope they don't find a way to hack into my Netflix account where Fight The System documentaries are always among my top suggestions.


Because I like doing things I never thought I would do, it is actually a kinda perfect assignment for me. Besides, it seems that even though Bogota is way safer than it used to be having some some 5-0 to contact if you find yourself in a bind just can't be a bad thing.