Friday, July 11, 2008

In the unlikely event you're mistaken for a serial killer...

It's three in the morning. You're asleep...or at least, you were. There's a noise outside that sounds as if the Macy's parade has decided to make your driveway their next thoroughfare, and with all the blaring sirens, you're not sure whether to duck and cover, or grab your gun.

The strobe lights from the three hundred police cruisers are making you sick to your stomach, and the voice on the bullhorn sounds half drunk. You lay there for a moment, before you make out a few words...namely, that you're surrounded, and to come out with your hands up.

So what happens in the unlikely event your neighbors believe you're a mild-mannered mass murderer?

Firstly, DON'T and I stress, do not, in your sleep-deprived haze, stumble through the front door in only your slippers, demanding to speak with someone's supervisor. At three in the morning, the po-po might be a bit testy. And they have the guns. More than you. Lots more than you. And they will most likely shoot you on sight, especially if your bits are swinging. No one likes swinging bits.

Secondly, even if you are terribly confused and rather anxious, try not to let the nervous, but evil, cackle escape. That tends to make you look suspicious...as well as the muttering, and the soliloquy about how you shall wear the pieced together skins of their many offspring...a bit buffalo bob-ish.

If they have you cornered like a rat...and you have not particular escape plan in mind, even though you are an innocent citizen with crazy ass neighbors...try to think of a way to talk yourself out of it. If you have seen Blazing Saddles be aware that holding yourself for ransom just might work. But only if you're African American.

Alright, so you've tried to talk, but they won't listen...or can't hear your terrified shrieking and cries for your mother over the wailing sirens that they have yet to turn off. Which, by they way, is waking your other neighbors, who are subtly being informed as to why the police are surrounding your humble home by means of "Please stay in your houses, we will shoot the sonofagun if he ever comes out."

You gather your courage around you, like a cloak of desperation that stinks of sweat, urine, and the hint of aftershave. You stand, and face your front door, like a prisoner awaiting the firing squad, walk outside...only to find that it wasn't you they were talking to in the first place...in your yard, laying prostrate, is a mild looking man, wearing the skins of the innocent.

And slowly, you begin to defecate on yourself.

But you have survived yet another unlikely event. You even have a picture for your unlikely even scrapbook...yet another day in the life of you.