Did you ever have an almost-got-caught experience? When did you find yourself in a compromising situation?

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Answers

Oh hell yeah - that is the ultimate teenage experience. I love it. I've had it. Except substitute the cop for MY DAD. Thank God for you, Pamie. I thought things like thatonly happened to me..

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

this summer me and my friends were coming from this girl's house who was an infamous pothead, and the three of us had just bought a bag each of the wacky tabackey. so we were heading toward the home of one of our friends to drop her off, and then we realize we had a flat tire. we had no idea there was a spare tire located in the back of the car, and we were really really really paranoid of the cops because of what we just did and the fact that curfew was nearing. so we figured it would be best to keep driving with the emergency lights on, just go very very slowly. the cop still showed up. not only were we in possession of marijuana, but we had a bowl that was just recently used in the car, so the car stunk, and so did we, and our eyes looked like jim breuer's. yet, the cop was not in the least suspicious. he actually changed the tire for us. and then another cop came by and we were positive that it was an ambush, but he helped out too. after that, i screamed a great big yelp of relief. whew.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

I may have told this story already, so stop me if you've heard it. No? Okay, one night back in college my buddy and i had spent the greater part of the night drinking as much malt liquor as our bellies would hold, and THEN we went to the pub. On our way back to his room, after endless drinks at the bar (to get more malt liquor, of course), we saw a Campus Security car. My buddy, who was something of a mad scientist and was a campus legend for blowing things up, making strange substances and machines, and breaking into places he wasn't allowed, says, "let's steal the keys out of the CampSec car! They probably have keys to every building on campus!" Now this sounded like a good idea to me too, but i should mention at this point that we were both so drunk we could barely see. I'm a little nearsighted at the best of times, and after some drinks, whooeee! So we're rummaging around in the front seat of the car trying to get the keys out of the ignition, when i notice that there's a shotgun locked to the dashboard. Since CampSec officers where i went to school don't pack heat, this puzzled me a bit, but the mystery was cleared up by a shout of "hey you!" and the vision of 2-3 cops running at us from out of a nearby dorm. So, we ran like hell. I could hear their footsteps right behind us, and i immediately split off to the right away from my friend and kicked in the afterburners. I could hear the one behind me shout "i've got this one" as they split up with us. I just hauled ass across the quad at top speed, which led to a mach 1 wipeout on the wet grass about halfway across. (blind drunk + sprinting = faceplant) I didn't even look back, i just got up and kept on running. The cop must have been far enough back, and i just kept going across campus until i ran out of steam and had to curl up in the bushes and try not to puke for a while. Finally, after skulking and creeping my way to the edge of campus i holed up at my girlfriend's house for the rest of the night. It wasn't until i talked to my buddy the next day that i even realized that it had been a town police car that we'd been trying to steal keys out of. Town police cars look nothing like CampSec cars. And now you know the dumbest thing i've ever done.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

well. my story is actually very similar to pamie's. except my boyfriend and i had, ahem, much less clothes on. and were in a bit more of a compromising position. we were...and anyway, suddenly, what to our wondering eyes did appear, but a G I A N T S E A R C H L I G H T weilded by yes, STATE TROOPERS. oh, the shame. booming out of their intercom came, "you need to leave right now. this is a state forest." so it took forever to get all the clothes back on and then CLIMB into the front seat of the car, made harder by the fact that the search light was STILL shining ever so brightly into the car. and then they took forever to reverse out and i couldn't see to reverse out because, yes, the search light was shining into the car. it sucked. we laughed though, hysterically. i mean, really, a STATE TROOPER???

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

I have two, both of which involve the Demon Weed. One night my roomie and I were in a the mood for a little mood alteration. Living right off the corner of Haight and Ashbury, it wasn't hard to find a bag of the San Francisco Treat. It's so casual there, I thought nothing of referring to it aloud as we were entered a convenience store to get munchies.

By the time we left, our hook up was waiting outside. As we headed up Haight toward home, we sampled the goods and haggled. We turned onto Ashbury (where we lived) and made the transaction.

Then things got wacky. The dealer got, well, paranoid and started accusing us of being snobs and thinking we're better than him. "I see you leave everyday for work...well I have a job, too, you aren't so much better than me." Somehow we got out of that and went into our place. He lived across the street.

An hour later, with the good times rolling, I happened to look out the window, where there were 6 police cars. Now, I used to really enjoy a good smoke-out, but if things started to go wrong, my alarm bells would go off like crazy. I still have this image of me trying to figure out where to hide my, uh, water pipe. I was running all over the flat, thinking, "the jig is up." Of course, being in that induced time-warp state, it probably took me 30 minutes to decide to put the pipe under the kitchen sink, behind the Comet. What was really silly about that is that the whole reason I bought that particular pipe was that it looked like a bud vase. When my parents came months later, I put it right on the living room table with a single rose.

Anyway, it was all for naught, the cops were busting the dealer across the street, who, thankfully, didn't turn us in.

Thanks for the topic Pamie, I've been wanting to write down that experience and the other one, which is much longer and more complex, for a long time.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Pamie, virtually the same thing happened to me, only we were parked (illegally) in a lot at a county park, at night, and apparently we were so, er, engrossed, that we didn't hear the cop car pulling up *directly behind us*. They came in with their lights off and THEN, once parked, turned the brights on full force. I have never been so startled in my life. My response (the teenage brain in effect again) was to shriek "Go! Go! Drive away!"...which, of, course, is impossible with a car parked behind you and a concrete barrier in front of you.

The cop wasn't that mean, though, and let us off with a warning and no parental phone call. I still think sneaking up on us with the headlights off was a dirty goddamn trick, though.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Am I the only one who hasn't almost gotten caught or even came close to almost getting caught? I feel so sheltered! -- Miss moNi from Red Rover

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Ok, the following stories involve the ultimate act of stupidity, so please don't get mad. They both involve drinking and driving. The first close encounter involved not only alcohol, but two other substances (hey, I was young). After having a blowout on the highway home from a wild party, I was having a little trouble changing my tire. It seemed I had the jack, but not the tire iron. So I jacked up the car and just sat there waving at cars hoping someone would have the proper tools. Of course, at 4am no one but the cops is going to stop, and that's just what happened. The friendly state trooper, after pointing out that I should probably go home and "sleep something off" before I tried to fix my car, offered to give me a ride home. I thanked him, explained that I had to get something out of my car, calmly placed all of my paraphernalia in my pockets, and walked back to his car and got in. Either he didn't notice or didn't care, because we had a very pleasant conversation on the way to my house. Unfortunately, I had left the key to my house (not on my keyring) in the car so I had to sleep on lawn furniture until I felt up to walking to a phone to get some friends to reunite me and my car.

The other story is actually that of a friend with whom I had shared a pitcher one evening. We were leaving downtown to go to a party, when we realized he was driving down a one-way street going, of course, the wrong way. We pulled into a parking lot to turn around, but a cop stopped us anyway. He asked if we had anything to drink, and although we really weren't drunk, we knew he'd smell it so we answered yes. He then went on a rant about drunk driving and asked if my friend had ever been to jail before. "Sort of," he answered, and then was forced to explain that it was for public intoxication. The nice officer let us go with a warning and called a cab for us to go straight home, saying that if he didn't see that truck in the parking lot all night, he would come arrest both of us. We thanked him, got in the cab, and instructed the driver to take us two blocks away to my car, and then continued on to the party.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

When I was 16 I went to Germany as an exchange student. My host sister and her boyfriend had a little party, involving a lot of alcohol. (Well, and other things, but I didn't touch any of that, no siree bob.)

After consuming vast quantities of intoxicating beverage we decided it would be a good idea to go for a swim. Hmm, no one had a pool. Hey, we could go to the public pool! Well, yeah, it's closed and stuff, but we'll just climb over the fence.

Yeah. Great idea.

We drove down to the pool and climbed over the fence. Nevermind the barbed wire at the top, just throw a shirt over it. There you go. Whoops, we forgot swimsuits. Oh, what the hell, let's just skinny-dip.

So we all stripped down to our birthday suits and dove in. Apparently the laughing and splashing attracted the attention of the night guard (whoops, forgot about him!) who then called the police. Fortunatly the guard came out and yelled at us first, which gave us time to get away.

It's rather difficult to climb out of a pool, pull clothes on over wet skin and then climb over a barbed wire fence while drunk. But we mananged to get away just as the cop was pulling up to the front entrance of the pool (we came in over the back fence.) And that's how I almost got arrested in Germany. =)

she's actual size

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

oh i am such a ho! when i was 18 i was making out with my boyfriend during the day in the parking lot of the orange county fair. no one was around ... we got a little well. um closer and his pants were around his ankles.. i was getting ready to uh .. dive so to speak and i look up and lo and behold.. cops on horseback. oh man was i mortified, but not as much as my date. they made him pull his pants up, we both had to get out of the car and they made us go back into the fair which we did. i guess we were lucky we didnt get popped for indecent exposure, but here is the beauty of it all. he was so frazzled that when we got back in the fair he realized that he had locked the keys in the car so we had to call home and get his brother to drive the spare keys to us.

sabs

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

I was 18 and it was my freshman year of college. I was at a large party at a house in town. I was underage, and so drunk I could barely stand up. I went to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. At this time, there were probably 50 people in the house. I came out less than 2 minutes later, and there were only 6 people left... the 2 guys who own the house, and 4 cops. I was so drunk, I tripped and almost fell into one of the cops. They had to know I was underage, since I looked 16. They told us to sit on the couch, and proceeded to lecture us about underage drinking and serving to minors and disturbing the peace. During this lecture, the person whose house this was looked very nervous and kept looking at his bedroom door. Apparently the cops didn't notice this, since they left 5 minutes later. After they left, the one roommate turned to the other and said "we're so lucky they didn't look in the other rooms". I asked "why?" They took me into their bedrooms. They were growing a lot of marijuana, had hydroponic lights and everything, and they had pills of various sorts all spread out. They were looking at years in jail if the cops had looked in the bedrooms, and even though I had nothing to do with it, I'm not sure what would have happened to me, since I was there at the time.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

well in the wild and woolly days of my youth, I was once in Berlin. I had met a lovely man there, and we were in that stage of (what? dating? um 'hanging out'? whatever) where every now and again we'd look at each other and blammo, spontaneous combustion. So we were driving in his car back to his house, and uh we didn't make it home. parked in the fog outside a government building in berlin, um gettin it on in the frontseat. but we didn't get busted. lucky lucky.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

I once had an alcohol related experience that ended in a conversation in a holding cell with a woman named Thelma who beat up her boyfriend. A while back, I had a fake I.D. and had used it for a few months with no problems. A few of my friends wanted to go to a local bar on a Wednesday (alcoholic students with no classes on Thursday). They all decided to meet at one place, but one of us couldn't get in. She was with her brother and tried to use the "were married so I can drink" law, because they had the same permanent address on their I.D.s. So she couldn't get in, so we went down the street to another bar after I had run into the previous one, chugged a beer, and came back out to see them still talking to the door person. The next bar we went to only had a table right by the huge, open picture window, but it's a Wednesday, no big deal. So right after we get our beers, the cops walk up and check I.D.s. Me being the idiot that I am, only had that one I.D. that said I was 24, and 7 inches taller than reality. So, they asked me to sign a piece of paper and of course I spelled the name wrong. They proceeded to take down my name and info, and put the handcuffs on me (like I was going to run somewhere, there were three of them.) They put me in the paddywagon (which looks like the inside of a very bright cheese grater) and carted me off to jail. The interesting side to the story is that I met some interesting people in the holding cell, bonded with the other women as we each took turns holding the head of a new inductee for having a few too many and trying to drive home, and had a great sing along of all of the T.V. show themes we could think of. The Brady Bunch theme resulted in them finally processing my paperwork rather quickly, and letting me out at about 3 in the morning. If you ever get arrested, try to stay in jail past midnight and into the morning and you get jail credit for two days. I feel so ashamed that I know the bargains of being a criminal.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

Well, this had more to do with my oh-so-bright friends at the time, but hell, I was there, so here goes. I was at an acquaintance's birthday celebration and we were bored after the whole pizza party/movie bit so the birthday girl decided she wanted to go get drunk and stoned at what they called "the haunted theatre," an abandoned building on a satellite campus of the local university. This satellite campus also happened to be DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM THE LOCAL PRISON.

Like I said, my friends were brilliant...

So we found our way into the theatre, turned on the lights, and then realized we'd forgotten flashlights for later and some munchies, so the two guys with us left us six girls inside with some bottles and a six-pack, a bottle of vodka, and two bags of pot. We waited and waited, and after fifteen minutes or so had gone by and still no sign of 'em, we figured something was wrong. Finally, one of the guys runs in, tells us to get in our car and just go, no explanation, and to wait for him in the A&P parking lot down the street. So the six of us pile ourselves and our controlled substances into the birthday girl's car and drive (exactly at the speed limit) to the A&P, where we SIT IN THE FRONT PARKING LOT WITH HEADLIGHTS ON AND RADIO BLARING.

Should we have been surprised when three cop cars pulled in and started questioning us? Probably not. But, somehow, we were.

Finally, the only one of us who was over 18 took the blame for leading us to the abandoned building, a few of the other girls made themselves look really pathetic by saying they'd just shared one beer, and we were let go with a warning not to go partying outside a prison. Thank god they didn't ask any more of us out of the car, or they'd have found out stash plus about five empty bottles. My nerves were shot to hell for days - I hadn't had anything to drink or smoke (sounds lame, but honest, I never drink and we were saving the weed for later), but I was terrified they'd somehow find the bottle caps I was hiding in my pocket. Heh. But we were the heroes of the school for the rest of the year.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

Hmmm... how about a few tales from the other side of the seachlight, so to speak...

Many years ago ('way back in 1966) the police dept in my home town decided to recruit some college kids (had to be age 21 or more) for summer jobs as cops... the idea being to get extra manpower to make up for summer vacations, and also to relieve the professionals of duty at the public beach, etc. Also hoped that this might help recruit college educated cops (which may have worked because two of the six of us did stay on after summer ended). Each week one of us had beach duty and the rest of us worked an 8pm to 4am shift (overlapping with the regular second and third sifts). On the night shifts we either rode in a squad car teamed up with a regular officer or we walked a beat alone.

So I soon learned that something to do to relieve boredom when riding around in a squad car on a quiet night was to check out various lovers lane areas, make sure that nobody was there under duress, and then chase them away.

One night we drove up into a country club golf course and found a couple in passionate embrace in a car. They had reached the point where neither of them was wearing any clothing at all. As they stood in our headlights attempting to cover strategic areas with their hands, I was tasked with making sure that there were no weapons mixed in with their clothing on their backseat. After producing identification (which indicated that they were both legal adults) my partner told them that they were lucky that the country club security had not found them because they were in the habit of pressing trespassing charges... and then advised them to go to a motel if they wanted to resume their interrupted activity.

Driving away, my partner told me how one night he had found a couple having sex on the fairway at that golf course after he had been called by the country club management complaining of trespassers. They had explained that they were married, had had a huge arguement at a dinner dance earlier at the clubhouse, but then had passionately reconciled. He told me that he often wondered what had happened to them, had they stayed together in a happy marriage or did they break up? How had his intervention (and not arresting them) impacted their lives?

Although I was present during at least a half dozen other incidents of couples making out in cars, that couple had been the most involved and least dressed. One night we came upon a couple in a city park (the parks all officially closed at nine pm)... the guy was an arrogant ivy league punk who let us know that he was a city hall intern for the summer and he had connections and who were we to bother him. My partner asked me to talk to him because I was the same age and because he was about ready to arrest his ass. I got him calmed down and got his girlfriend to persuade him to shut up and leave because they were about to be arrested for violating the park closing ordinance. The next day I was called in by the captain asking for a report because this creep had filed a complaint claiming that he had been bullied by my partner. I wrote a very detailed report explaining exactly how obnoxious this guy had been in claiming special privilege and inside connections... apparently I did a good job because the complaint was subsequently withdrawn and my partner from that night was quite pleased with me.

One of the other summertime cops was walking a beat one night in the uptown business district. He was walking through a parking lot as if he was checking on the cars parked there overnight (but really to smoke a cigarette because we were not supposed to smoke "in public") when he suddenly realized that there was a couple engaged in sexual intercourse on the back seat of a car right in front of them. They looked up and saw him standing there but continued their activity with out missing a beat. He then left the parking lot, went on to the end of his patrol area, and returned to the parking lot about 20 or 30 minutes later. The couple was now dressed and sitting in the front seat smoking cigarettes. His big mistake was in telling this story back at headquarters. When asked why he had just walked off he replied that he had been embarassed and flustered and couldn't think of anything to say. This led to him being the butt of many jokes for the rest of the summer.

One of the officers -- let's call him Fred for the sake of this story -- had a reputation as a ladies man. He was always being told by other cops Hey man, we saw you and your woman parked in your car last night and he would always reply something like yeah, so next time come over to the car and say hello. So one night he and one of his female conquests were in the back seat of his car parked at the public beach -- and, as he described it, they had nothing on but the radio -- when the squad car drove into the parking log she wanted to pause in their activity until the car left but he told her not to worry because they would recognize his car and leave them alone. The squad car did drive off and they resumed their passion until suddenly a blindingly bright spotlight shown right into the side window of his car and a police siren shrieked right next to them... and as the siren faded down and silence returned the other cops yelled out "Hiya Fred!" and then drove away. That was the end of Fred's romantic interlude. His date quickly dressed and demanded to be taken home. When he came into the squadroom and angrily demanded to know what they thought they had been doing and was told "But Fred, you always said we should come over and say hello so we did."

Well, I could go on about times when I was in the comprimising situation but I think I've said enough for today.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

Sadly not compromising. . .

Many years ago, while still at university my friend (let's call him Dave)(because that's his name) and I drove to the pub for a few drinks.

On leaving the pub, our good intentions of leaving his mini-van (for American readers, that is an incredibly small car, which the makers laughingly tried to turn into a van by just sticking a couple of doors on the back) in the car park evapourated, unlike the rain which was p***ing down.

Driving back we passed a new traffic island; it had recently had new illuminated "Keep Left" signs installed, and we thought one of them would look just right in our student house. Dave backed the (so- called) van into one of the signs, while I tried to make sure he just pushed it without breaking it. When I was convinced that it was all loose, I told him to go forward - my mistake, as the sign was still attached to a large spring, leaped upright and blacked my left eye! Eventually, we got the thing into the back of the van, and drove off - sadly a police car on the other side of the road spotted us. While they were turning, Dave took off, disappeared down a couple of side streets and then attempted to negotiate a very sharp turn.

Due to:- a) wet roads b) five pints of strong English ale c) poor design of and d) poor maintenance of the vehicle the van decided that straight on was infinitely preferable. We ploughed through an iron fence (luckily, held only in place by rust) and ended up in the middle of a rhoed.. rhodo..rodhoden.. BIG bush, hidden from the police car as it went sailing off into the night, horn blaring and lights flashing!

Dave was ok; the van got a couple of scratches; I blacked my right eye as well; the Keep Left sign looked stupid in our house, so we got rid of it

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

I once shot a man just to watch him die....

No wait.. that was Johnny Cash...... I just like the song...

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

God, I think that happens to everyone. I have gottne "almost caught" numerous times back in my day. I had the same cop thing happen when I was15. Me and my then boyfriend wanted to "look at the stars" too. We would end up at strange places, this time we went to an elementry school and went for it. Well, we hear a car pull up and freak. We are trying to get dressed and then, I'm like we gotta hide, we are weaving in and out of portables but then I see the flashlight. He asked me the same question, but right in front of my boyfriend. I was just shaking and so embarrassed! The cop was shinning the flashlight right in our faces, it was crazy.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

No, it doesn't happen to almost everyone. Man, I'm jealous. And y'all call yourselves "geeks"?? Or maybe this is a completely different bunch of readers from the self-confessed geeks?

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2000