My Mom Caught Me!

I got busted for throwing water balloons at cars when I was in jr high. My dad worked with this lady whose husband was a police officer with the Roy City Police Department. As punishment for throwing water balloons at cars, my dad arranged for me to ride along with Officer Evertsen one night. I pretended to be mad at this punishment, but I was secretly excited. I couldn't wait to put on a bullet proof vest and provide back up for an actual Roy City cop. That's not how it turned out.

I ended up sitting in the car during most of his calls. It was so boring. It was during one of my 30 minute stints in the passenger seat that I realized how heavily edited COPS is on TV. Each one of the situations on COPS that lasts six minutes on TV actually lasts two hours in real life. I felt kind of bad for Officer Evertsen, though. I could tell he felt bad that the night was so uninteresting. A call came in that there were some kids throwing rotten apples at cars. I was stoked. I thought he might actually let me get out of the car to chase down my peers. Unfortunately we didn't find them.

Then a call came in that sounded pretty cool. A train driver (engineer?) had called to report seeing what looked like a dead body off to the side of the tracks. I think we were both equally excited. When we got close to where the body was reported, he turned off the road and started driving on a dirt road that ran parallel to the tracks. He was driving slowly and asked me to use the light on the side of the car to look for the body. He said to me, "You look at that side and I'll check this side." It was like we were looking for an address or something... only it wasn't an address. We were looking for a mangled corpse. As I peered out the passenger side of the car, Officer Evertsen was telling me about how some people jump in front of trains when they want to kill themselves. As he was talking, I started to get pretty scared. I decided I didn't really want to see a dead body.

Then I saw something mostly hidden in the tall grass. I got a knot in my stomach, throat and all five of my appendages. I said, "I think I see something." He stopped the car and cranked his light around to where mine was shining. A slideshow of gruesome images started going through my head. Most of them were photos of the farm injuries I found on the internet. Body parts that didn't even look like body parts. Then I heard Officer Evertsen say, "That's just a bag of concrete. Dang." "Dang." I echoed. Once I was told it wasn't a body, I kind of wished it was... mostly cause it would have been a great story to tell my friends.

"Well, let's keep driving to see if we can find anything else... but that's probably what the guy saw." We finished our patrol and didn't see any bodies. Then Officer Evertsen decided that he'd had enough of our uneventful evening. "How about if we go back to the station and I'll show you some file photo's of other suicides we've had on these tracks." The thought of seeing pictures instead of an actual body sounded much more appealing to me.

We drove back to the station and he busted out some seriously awesome photo's of other train track suicides. Totally bitchin'. I won't describe the photo's in too much detail, but one of the pictures he showed me didn't appear to be a photo of much of anything. Then he said, "Do you see that right there?" He pointed to a small object that could have been anything. He asked, "Do you know what that is?" I told him I didn't have any idea. He said, "That's the roof of the guy's mouth."

It was seriously one of the most enjoyable times of my life... up to that point.

I got set up on a date last night. Her name is Carrie. As I was driving to her house to pick her up, I realized that I had no idea what her last name was. I had spoken to her on the phone a couple of times, but didn't think to ask her last name.

She was the only one at home when I got there. She invited me in and told me she needed to do one final thing before we left. When she went into the other room, I decided to check out the mail on the table to see if I could find something addressed to her. I saw something from an Attorney's Office and I saw a collection notice from Columbia House Music Club (who doesn't owe those savages money?) addressed to Carrie Evertsen.

Turns out Carrie's dad is the officer I rode along with eight years ago. I told her the story about my ride-along. It was the most entertaining part of the date, unfortunately.

See, that's why I told the story about my ride-along with Carrie's dad instead of my date with Carrie. It was a much more interesting blog post that way. Carrie has an overbite and her eyes are too far apart. Oh... and I'm pretty sure she's not Mormon.

Calvin