The Man

We've all had the odd run-in with the Man, right? You're doing something on the edge of stupid and on go the red lights. "Can I get your license and registration please?" " Sir, can you please get down from there?" "Where are your clothes son?" That sort of thing.

I was recently reminded of one of my all-time favorite interactions with Johnny Law. It was the Snowball's Chance Formula Ice Race and Snowy Dash for Cold Hard Cash about three or six years ago. We were doing our thing, riding bikes on the frozen figure eight of doom, knocking the crap out of each other, warming by a raging bonfire, drinking canned courage, and generally being dumbasses. This is in the middle of the day in the middle of winter in the middle of the city in the middle of a frozen lake mind you.

Well, someone noticed that we were having fun, and being a person that hated fun they called the cops. Luckily, we were about finished anyhow, but I looked up just in time to see a uniformed officer of Minneapolis's finest sauntering across the lake having left his squad car on the street above. Now, I've been in these situations many times (because, well, look at the people we hang out with, right?) and I know that confrontation isn't the way to stay out of jail. So, I was working on the cleverest thing I could say to the officer as he walked up - when I got trumped.

"You just made a fat cop walk down a big hill."

The funniest, best thing I have ever heard a cop say.

He was cool. We cleaned up. We started to leave. He said, "Where are you headed?"

I said, "We're going downtown to get some pizza and warm up."

He said, "Good, good, good. Downtown is out of my precinct. You have a nice day." And off he went. Why can't all cops be as awesome?

Then just the other day I had the opposite experience...