As writers, we break all kinds of laws. Or, our characters do, at least. Sometimes. The biggest laws most of us have broken are grammar laws. Luckily, we tend to be our own grammar police, so we only ever get busted by each other, or editors. Maybe we get all of our troublemaking out of our system by writing it instead? I’m sure all of us could spin you a good tale about the trouble we’ve been in…
Most school administrators didn’t like me very much and retaliated in interesting ways. Some of stories cannot be told, as some of them are still alive. Luckily, one is me.
Um, no. I’ve had a run-in or two but never had anything one would call trouble. A buddy of mine and I got busted for trespassing. The very nice police put us in separate cars (there were three that answered the call) and drove us back to mine. They worked us pretty hard while we were ostensibly ‘in custody’ and they did their best to scare us. When we were asked if we were drunk, my answer was: “No sir. We’re too young.” When we were asked if we were stoned, I answered: “No sir, can’t afford it.” That got a smirk from one officer. They checked my trunk for anything illegal and told me to return the overdue library books and let us go.
I suppose this is where I tell everyone about where the dead bodies are buried… oh, wait… this isn’t supposed to be fictional. Beyond a couple of noise complaints and a moving violation… the police and I haven’t had much interaction. I hate disappointing people, so that has a tendency to keep me out of trouble. Boring, I know. But that’s just how it is.
When I was a pre-teen, a friend of mine and I decided it would be fun to bombard cars on a nearby highway with snowballs. Third car I hit was a cop car. We ran like hell through back yards and hid out in the woods for about 20 minutes, spying on the policeman looking for us. The policeman drove slowly through our neighborhood ringing doorbells asking if anyone knew who we were. When we finally made it back to my house, our garage door closed _just_ as the police car drove past. Close one!
I’m a pretty straight arrow, so I’ve never been in trouble with any kind of authority that I can think of. For the most part, I’m a big believer in laws and rules. I think they are in place for a reason, and, most of the time, we should follow them. That being said, I may or may not have spent some time in my early 20s poking around Area 51 and flipping off a guard station located at the boundaries of that particular government-controlled playground.
I’m the type of person (girl) who cries whenever I get pulled over, so needless to say I fear getting in trouble with authority too much to do anything that’d put me in that kind of situation. I’ve gotten a couple traffic tickets, my sixth grade teacher chewed me out one day for having a bad attitude and one time I was in a car full of teenagers where we got pulled over and the driver got arrested, but short of that, I’ve kept my nose clean. Although that could all be a lie. I could be America’s Most Wanted. Is that show still around?
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