Life Hacks/Play it cool, that guy was a real bastard
“Yeah, well, he was a real bastard.” You say, “I’m just sitting there watching my sister enjoy herself playing with all her friends when he comes up all angry about a girl playing base-ball and saying she ought to be playing soft-ball because he can’t stand the idea of his son playing in the same game that a girl is playing.”
“Why don’t you take it from the beginning.” Officer Thompsett says.
“Right,” you say, and then tell her about everything relevant from when Billy protested Roni’s involvement in the game and ran off to get his dad after you told him to deal or get out, to when you jumped on top of the authority abusing police officer and pinned him after he fell then called them in to help. You did minimize your level of intent in facilitating his fall though. You told them that he had grabbed you and you struggled for half a second, and he fell because of his bad footing. Not too far from the truth, you figure though that down-playing your level of skill and agency in this situation is the better way to go.
After you give your verbal explanation of the situation, she asks you and Patricia back to her car so that you can fill out a written statement. It takes a little bit of will power for you to hold the pen steady, but despite that you still manage to write with excellent penmanship, actually putting in a few flourishes into your letters here or there as a matter of artificially induced habit.
“All right, thank you,” officer Thompsett says as she takes the page from you. “Well that’s some pretty good hand-writing,” she says.
“Uhh… thanks,” you comment. “I practiced my penmanship, I had an interest at getting into drafting at one point.”
“Wow,” she says, “you wouldn’t even know you were rattled from all that mess.”
“Ehh… there are a few parts that didn’t turn out quite right,” you comment, “you can see it on a lot of the circular letters on the first line, but I managed to do alright once I got going.”
“Yeah...” she agrees in an ‘I guess I’ll take your word for it’ sort of tone. “Wait! You’re 15?” She comments in surprise as she clutches the clip-board with your statement tighter.
“Uhh… yeah,” you say, not missing the very disappointed slumping of her shoulders.
“Well...” she says, “are you in the junior police accademy or anything like that? You seemed to know the police call signals, although I am not quite sure a… what was it… 24-58? Not completely sure that is the correct way to describe this situation.”
“Assault by a disorderly person,” you say, “I think it fits. Anyway, no, I’m not in the junior police accademy. That was just… something I picked up out of curiosity.”
“Well, you might think about it,” Officer Thompset comments, “you seem to know how to handle yourself pretty well. We could use more guys like you on the force.”
“And less bastards like that huh?” You comment.
“Yeah, exactly!” She laughs. “Anyway, here is my card,” she says, handing you a card with her personal contact information to you. “Give me a call if you have any questions, I’ll get you any information you need if you decide you want to look into some of our junior training programs.”
You accept her card and watch conflicted as she gets into her car to drive off. Did you just get hit on by a police officer? This is definitely getting weird. You walk back to the side-walk where Roni is watching concerned and impatient, but she smiles warmly at you as you approach her. You pocket the card and consider what to do next.
What do you do?
- Suggest you should go home
- Stick around here and comfort Roni
- Go back to the baseball diamonds and the other kids’ parents
- Try to get away and break out the duck
