My fishing story
Last time I went fishing was 20-odd years ago.
It was a clear black night under a clear white moon in Santa Barbara County. I was housesitting for my college journalism publication director, who had been kind enough to lend me the use of an old Honda while she was away. The Honda got me to the boat. The boat got me near the fish. I didn’t catch a thing.
On the drive back to the house, winding along the road that borders Isla Vista, the local college town, a summer breeze spilled in through the rolled-down driver’s-side window. And then Christmas lights in the rear view mirror, and then the siren, and then the blinding spotlight.
I had never been pulled over before, but I knew the drill. I pulled over, stopped, rested both hands on the wheel in plain view, and waited for the officer to approach the vehicle.
The officer did not approach the vehicle.
Some time went by. I did not know this drill.
As the mirrors were useless in the spotlight, I made the mistake of glancing over my left shoulder.
The blinding light replied in a loud megaphone squawk: FSHTHNTUFFCLE!
Because I was not fluent in megaphone, I leaned in over my shoulder and attempted to squint the word into audibility. This gesture drew a louder, clearer reply: FACE THE FRONT OF THE VEHICLE!
I faced the front of the vehicle. USING YOUR LEFT HAND, REMOVE THE KEYS FROM THE IGNITION!
I noted that I was becoming rapidly fluent in understanding megaphone, but not yet fluent enough to communicate the difficulty of accomplishing this task as a right-handed, longlimbed driver in an ancient, tiny car.
Somehow, I removed the keys. TOSS THE KEYS OUT THE WINDOW!
Keys tossed, I saw the shotgun before I ever saw his face.
I had read before that witnesses who have had guns pointed at them deliver the same useless testimony about the weapon: It was big. And black. And I remembered this as I looked sidelong at the shotgun pointed at my head and caught myself thinking, it looks so plastic.
It looks so plastic. What a silly thing to think, I thought, as I looked sidelong at the shotgun pointed at my head. See, I’m not so different.
They ordered me out of the vehicle and told me to kneel on the pavement and place my hands behind my back. They cuffed me and put me in the back of the cruiser.
Some time passed. They told me later that there had been a report of a shotgun fired in a nearby apartment complex, and that the suspect was driving a white Honda.
A short time later on that clear black night under a clear white moon in Santa Barbara County, I signed a form noting that I had been briefly detained, and they let me get back in the ancient, borrowed and unmistakably reddish-brown Honda.
And as I drove back to the borrowed house in the borrowed Honda, strange waves of shock and relief and the joy of not having my brains blown out in the borrowed Honda washed over me. And as I rushed indoors and sank into the borrowed bed, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Years later, I awoke to the realization that what saved me from getting my brains blown out may not have been the color of the Honda.
If they ever asked me why I was driving a car I didn’t own, they took my story at face value. I may have been ordered out of the Honda at gunpoint, but I wasn’t shoved to the pavement, or thrown into the cruiser.
They even complimented my hat.
Maybe such restraint in the face of uncertainty stands as a credit to their training. I’ve overheard enough scanner traffic over the years: First reports aren’t always accurate. These were public servants responding to a report of shots fired, imperiling their own lives to protect us. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. No harm, no foul, and whatever such thoughts made it easier for me to go to sleep that night.
Maybe if I’d been a reddishbrown boy in a borrowed white Honda instead of a white boy in a reddish-brown Honda, things might have turned out the same: 20-odd more years of life and love and laughter and sorrow after that fishing trip, and who knows how many more to come.
And I’d like to believe that. I’d like to believe that, despite the nightly news, the internet, and the last 400 years of history that brought us here. I’d sleep better at night, and I’ve got family and friends and coworkers and strangers I’ve yet to meet whose odds of longer and healthier lives would be significantly improved if we all lived in that beautiful world.
But we all know damned well we aren’t there yet. How many more lives are going to be cut short before we get there?