I haven't told anybody about this because it's not really that good of a story nor does it have a good point or moral or lesson about it, but I will probably think about it every time I drive down this distant NW Philly street now, the night that I was driving around here and saw cherry top lights flashing in the distance, and approached, and found like five cop cars all blaring their sirens, and slowly chasing maybe 40 kids, all of whom were probably sixteen or seventeenish, "chasing" them at like parade-speed, the kids not even acknowledging the coppers' presence, but walking slowly, in a clump, laughing and smiling and having a great time, taking selfies with the squad cars in the background, the cops all looking middle aged and sullen and white and male in their cars, occasionally swerving to make sure none of the kids veered off the path, the path to who knows where, home maybe, seeing as no one was taking action, not the least of all me, who bore witness to the slow ritual of young teens making mirth in the middle of the night out near the woods, and as someone who used to do everything he could to avoid the police, wondering what it meant that the cops didn't seem to be doing anything but supervising the slow walk home.
2 comments:
did you feel jealousy that the kids lacked fear of reckoning? renewed annoyance at a bored bureaucracy that policed your own youthful mischief and threw the book? or did you feel gratitude/nostalgia for the way you got to live your life and feel the stakes of defiance compared to these youths' nonplussed dance through life?
Great questions.
Q1. Not jealousy, just sort of marveling over how daring they were. I can't think of a single scenario in which I was unafraid around police officers while drunk, and that includes when I was older than 21yo.
Q2. Probably yes. I think about this a lot when I think about Eddie Polec, and how the fact that he was a keg that night of his own throwing was excused because of what happened next, and how it's sort of unfair that authority figures can pick and choose who to fuck with. But on this particular night a few weeks ago, I felt it strongly because of the cold emotionless faces of the cops in their cars. I would've been much less annoyed if they were smirking too. But it was creepy how stone faced they were.
Q3. This but only in retrospect. Especially as I sit here and type about all those old times, and enjoy the stories that we can now share, due to how it was back then, and wouldn't have been now.
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