Part Deux

I get bothered when I see police. I don't really like police. Its not that I'm ungrateful for protection and when I need the police I would like to think they would be there trying to do what they can for me.

But I don't like the way they talk to me. I have a strange sort of indignation at being spoken to like I'm a criminal - because I'm not. I don't look like a criminal (whatever that may be - shifty I guess) and I sure as hell don't look like I'm doing wrong. But whenever the police pull up, I stiffen and feel like I'm going to be accused of something. Without sounding like the classic Camus character, I think it comes down to always feeling like a non-participant, an objective observer who sees the network for what it is. Its nothing to do with the Matrix or adolescent angst. It just being on the outside and staring in and it will always be that way. Being a part of something, but something separate. Its not bad, but thats all I'm going to say about that.

Thusly, when I see the Po Po I automatically feel like a gypsy and its Germany in 1942. I'm in for a world of hurt and there is no way I can explain how I'm not responsible for whatever I'm being accused of.

The car pulls up. I lower my coffee. The window rolls down. The policeman looks at me and says "Where the fuck have you been?". Simultaneously another officer gets out of the car and rushes around the back.

This is it.

I'm done for.

Some how I thought it would be ASIO, or SWAT or at a stretch (but in some ways more likely) FSB working with MI6. Infact, lets not conceal the ego: I thought it would be fucking NATO.

Instead, its two working stiffs from SAPOL. Oh well, they appear to want me bad for whatever I did so its going to happen and I need to take action. Unlike my Martian encounters, there is no lag in my brain. I grab my notebook, press play on my iPod (Darwin Deez "Radar Detector" and ofcourse it was already playing) and literally jump the coffee sponsor traffic barrier (Lavazza you are no match for me).

What should I have done? The guy was running at me and the other guy was saying swears to me. At the very least if I'm going down, I'm not going down after being tackled by a kind of fat cop. I'll be like that guy in The Name of the Father and walk out the front door.

So I got the hell out of there. I was halfway across the road when I looked back... and saw them restraining some guy with a pony tail. Stupid pony tail sitting right behind me in the cop's line of view... Stealing my thunder. I walked back and jeered in my head that it was his turn and I 'got lucky this time'. Again, I stress, I have done nothing wrong and probably hold the least interest to the police.

But alas, this is the head I live in.