Travelin' Man/Beautiful Loser

I have been making chili for the "big game", (which we'll call it since I don't have express written consent of the NFL to use the other more official term), since the year 1994. That year, I was home from school for the weekend and got together with friends and made chili and watched the game. I don't know why I decided to make chili, it just seemed right.

My friends and I liked what I made, but my Dad would have nothing to do with it since it was too hot. Apparently he is not a fan. S'okay, more for me. I refined the process time over time and found out I made a pretty serviceable chili. Chili the meal grew to become chili, the event. It was a holiday unto itself. As such, I used to make it only once per year. In recent years I have made it more often. I drink coffee every morning, why would I limit myself to chili only once per year?

I begin by talking about chili because I made some today so it is ready for the "big game". We are going to a party hosted by friends Jason and Chandra. We are also bringing corn dip, which came into our lives this summer courtesy of Shannon Milinovich when we visited her and husband Greg this past summer. Em also made a cheese ball which may end up going, too. I guess we are catering this thing. That's o.k., I'll make it up in numbers of beers consumed.

But more to the point, or away from it, I don't know. I told the story in a previous blentry about being home for winter break in winter of 1994 and getting pulled over for going egregiously fast through a twisty portion of a local expressway after having had a beer or two while underage and getting away with a warning. The following story happened only weeks after that.

I had been dating a girl and immediately after winter break, we broke. Up, that is. It sucked. I won't get into it, but I wasn't handling it especially well. It was sudden, too. So the girl and I talked on the phone the morning of the day after the "big game" and she seemed to intimate that she might have changed her mind. Perhaps the fact that I hurriedly got in the car and immediately began speeding toward campus an hour-and-a-half away will give you unique perspective into my mental status at the time.

I dodged the cops all the way. I was very good at it and I had a very good radar detector, or as we called it "fuzz buster." I was on the last road to campus, almost home, almost there. Just up the road, happiness waits. What's that sound?'

It was the fuzz buster. The sound it made said "You're screwed." And I was screwed. The low profile cruiser was coming head-on and blasted me with instant-on radar as he came over a rise. I didn't have a shot in hell of getting out of it.

I stopped without being chased. He made a 231 point turn that seemed to last forever... I should have run. By the time he got his Crown Vic pointed in the right direction I could have been in the next county. But instead, I waited.

The fat cop sauntered up to my car, hand on gun... because after all, I had waited the 35 minutes it took him to get all turned around only to shoot him.

"Afternoon!" he said in a fake happy sing-song voice.

"It certainly was" came my glib reply.

"You know how fast you were going?"

"Yeah, 72..."

"72. Yep. 72. And do you know the speed limit?"

"Uh, it's fifty f..."

"Just fifty, son. Don't stretch it. It's just fifty. Junior!", he called now to his partner, "College boy here got himself one of them fuuuzzzzz bussssterrrrs!"

"Aw, hell," came back Junior's response as if something bad and well beyond his control was about to happen. "That's too bad. I thought college kids were smart."

"Well," big fatty said to me now, "I guess we can't let you go now, can we? Gimme your papers." he said with a heavy sigh as if to underscore I had brought this whole thing on myself.

My registration and proof of insurance were in a drawer that was underneath my passenger seat as my car was among the first generation with airbags and the airbag had supplanted the glove box. I explained this to the cop so he didn't get trigger happy with me.

"I am going to get my papers from the drawer underneath the seat. I am going to move slowly. Please, don't shoot me for speeding."

So, I removed my belt and slowly reached down and to my right to get my papers from the drawer. As I came back up with my I was facing the previously unseen Junior now at my passenger window, service revolver trained on me. The line in the Lynard Skynard song rang through my mind "I'm tellin' you son, it ain't no fun, starin' straight down a .44."

True that.

"Put that away!" I said, probably quite a bit more weakly in reality than I remember it being. "I told you what I was doing!" I said now, a little too loudly to the fat cop at my driver's window.

"I guess he didn't hear you." he said smiling.

"You think you could have given him the message?" I asked a little put off by the fact I had a gun in my face for no good reason.

"Papers." was the single word reply.

I waited an additional eternity while fatty and Junior sat in the cop car, probably looking me up in the computer ( or, SCMODS if you're Elwood Blues), to assess my threat level. No doubt they were hoping I was wanted in seven states for all sorts of unspeakable acts and capital crimes. I was not.

Ironically for a person who had not to that point (nor to this point) been arrested, it was not the first time I had a policeman aim a gun at my head.

I used to work third shift in high school during the summer. When I had a day off, I stayed on third shift hours. My friend Brian was the only one who was either intrepid enough or stupid enough to stay up all night with me. Brian and I shared a love of cars. We used to ply the avenues driving lot to lot looking at cars, smoking and talking. One night, I spotted an MG I wanted to look at. I pulled in around the back of the sales building where there was some parking. I left the car running as Brian was not interested in looking at the car. I left him and went around the front of the building.

I was bending over the MG, looking at the interior when I heard the unmistakable whine of a Crown Victoria's fuel pump delivering full volume to feed a hard working cop car engine. Thus is the level of my car sickness, I can tell the type of car it is by certain defining noises.

The car had jumped the curb and stopped mere feet from a very stunned me. The cop got out, gun drawn, which even though we were in a sketchy part of town was a bit of a disproportionate response to finding a suburban kid looking at a British sports car. Of course anyone who knows anything about cars knows that had I been thinking about buying a British car, the cop would have been doing me a favor by shooting me.

He got behind me after astutely assessing I was no risk to his life and spread my feet wide by kicking them with his and held my hands behind my back while going through my pockets. I feebly explained I was just looking at cars and why I was looking at cars at three in the morning.

Of course I had driving gloves and a Swiss army knife in the pockets of my wind breaker which he tried in vain to classify as burglary tools. I assured him I wasn't burgling anything and I hadn't done anything wrong and he should just let me go.

He did.

Brian sat in my car on the back side of the building, radio on, car running, with no idea of the ordeal unfolding only a few feet from where he sat. Of course, he scarcely believed me when I tried to tell him. Needless to say we were done car shopping that night.

So, here I was, a couple years later, a mostly innocent college kid who was love lorn and speeding his way back to his beloved. It was the second time in my life I had a gun pointed at me by a cop. I was beginning to feel put-upon.

Fat cop came back and gave me a ticket for the whole magilla. 72 in a 50. I don't remember what it cost, but for a kid my age it was a lot. It was a lot of points, too. I didn't like fat cop. I don't think fat cop liked me, too.

After my Homeric trip back to campus, expensive ticket in hand, it didn't take but five minutes to realize what an idiot I had been. There was to be no reconciliation. I was just being toyed with.

At least that snapped me out of that funk and I would no longer allow myself to be a victim of love. At least not until the next girl a couple years later.

I am happy to say I haven't had a gun pointed at me since. Even though I hang out with a fair amount of people with access to them and I have a license to carry one. Of course, I'm not about to point one at myself-that being pretty much the number one thing they teach in gun class. If you pull the gun and aim it at something, you better be good and damn sure you want it to die.

But, I've gotten off point. All I really wanted to say is, I love chili. And, um, RSL? Your loss. I was a catch.