Chapter 11 – Have another one Ossifer!

Chapter 10 – Have another one Ossifer!

“You’re drunk you just don’t know it”

On the surface any person would think that this statement would be well thought out and relatively harmless. But coming from a police officer who was to know that this statement would disrupt an entire evening. Curious aren’t you?

Every year Halloween Havoc wrapped up with a wet/dry dance whether it be at the college or another nearby establishment. It just so happened this one was the last one to be held at the college. Myself as well as a host of other people were in charge of organizing this year’s dance. So we arrived early afternoon to start setting up the music table and add a few decorations here and there. A couple of hours before the dance started we went over to the liquor store and picked up the mass amount of booze that would be required to keep all of the students and some staff happy.

Finally people started to show up and the music started pumping, before you knew it, the place was absolutely rocking, people having a good time and the booze was flowing like water. Now, where the wet bar was located, there was a large window that looked out to a commons area just in front of the college along Broadway St. where on a really nice day people would come out and eat their lunch.

It was also a very common place where Woodstock’s riff raff would congregate to smoke dope and drink. (College Students were a lot smarter, they did it where no one could see them) On this night the riff raff were about 30 kids between the ages of 13-15. All night they would be knocking on the window asking the bartender to pass some booze through the window to them. This got to be such a problem that a couple of us were asked by then Student Activities Co-ordinator Lori-Jean Johnson, to go out and see if we could disperse the crowd. Remember this was a Halloween dance so when we went outside, we were still in our costumes. I was dressed like Garth (Wayne’s World) Chris McGarrigle was dressed up like Aunt Jemima, there were others that followed us out, but I can’t remember what costumes they had on.

The confrontation began with just mere words being slung back and forth. Being as intoxicated as they were, the “children” didn’t have very much ammo in the way of insults. The verbal jawing continued for about 15 minutes when Woodstock’s finest arrived on the scene with lights a blarin in two cruisers. By this time, no physical action had taken place, but as soon as one of the police officers were getting out of their car, this very brave, stoned and very stupid girl decided to rush across the lawn at Chris. All Chris could do to protect himself was extend his arm to keep her at bay, but of course all the police saw was Chris lifting his arm, and the girl falling over. (She did run right into his arm) This seemed to be enough grounds for them to arrest him for assault.

Chris was rather intoxicated, as he and a bunch of friends decided to play century club before attending the dance. But he knew and the rest of us knew that the police had the wrong person, so he put up a little bit of a fight in protest.

Thinking it was the right thing to do at the time, I approached the officer that was placing Chris in the back seat of the first car and told him that they had no right to apprehend Chris, at least for what they were basing it on. As soon as I spoke my piece, another officer approached me and led me back to the second cruiser where I thought I would be questioned as an eyewitness. I couldn’t have been any more wrong.

The officer opens the back door of the car and asks me to get in. Right now I am thinking to myself how weird this is because if all they wanted to do was ask me a couple questions, they could do that OUTSIDE of the cop car.

“Why do I have to get in the car when all you want to do is ask me some questions?” I politely asked the officer.

“Please get in the car,” the officer grumbled again.

I was really confused at this time and began to get a little irate. I told him I wasn’t getting in the car until he told me what was going on. He then proceeded to inform me that I was in fact being detained under the suspicion of being drunk in a public place.

Sure, I had a couple of beer before the dance even started and had a couple more in the short time I was actually in the dance. But I was far from drunk. But being that he smelled booze on my breath, and evidently trying to tell them how to properly do their job was warrant enough for Woodstock’s finest to detain me.

I protested a little stronger and a little louder now and was in the middle of a long rant when the officer put his hand on my head and pushed me into the back of the cruiser and stated those famous words......

“You’re drunk you just don’t know it.”

If you all of a sudden hear a loud laughing noise, sorry that is the voice inside my head cause he still finds that very very funny.

He closed the door and peered in through the glass with a little smirk on his face. I gave him the double finger salute and called him everything but late for dinner.

I sat in the back of the car for a good 15 minutes before we made our way up to the station. While still outside the dance one after another, friends of mine came up to the car to ask me how I was and they were doing everything they could to make sure I would be released shortly. Oh how I wish that were true.

During the drive, the officer decided he was going to place nice guy and try to chat me up, I would have none of it.

“So, what are you taking at the college?” he asked, to which I replied, “you can go f*** yourself if you think I am going to start a conversation with you.” Needless to say he shut up in a hurry.

We finally arrived at the station, and Chris and I were being led in at the same time. We were laughing and saying how stupid the Woodstock police force actually was because this all seemed to be a little ridiculous. If the officers even had half a brain in their head, they would have noticed that we were all having a good time, trying to protect our dance from the little hooligans, and let us go with a warning or something but of course that would have been too easy.

They took Aunt Jemima (Chris) directly to the tank where they tried to take off his work boots. During the process he was in fine form, shouting protests of racism and sexual harassment. I couldn’t help but laugh and was paying no attention to the officer asking me questions. There was even a little game of "chase the drunk around the drunk tank."

“Do you have anything in your pockets?”

I reached in and found a couple of pennies and a rather large ball of lint to show him. He pulled a plastic bag from the drawer of his desk and asked me to place the contents of my hand into the bag. Being in a rather un-cooperative mood, I threw the pennies and the lint across the room, when all of a sudden some lackey comes running into the room and retrieves the items I sent flying no more than 30 seconds earlier.

All though this was a little weird, nothing would prepare me for the officer’s next statement.

“Please remove your shoes and your watch please.”

“You give me a good reason why I should take my shoes off, and I might just think about it.” The officer looked a little stunned and informed me at this time that I would be placed in the holding cell with Chris for a little while so we both could, get this now, “sober up a little.”

I stopped laughing and before I had the chance to wipe the tears out of my eyes, some one came up, grabbed my feet and removed my shoes and placed them in the bag as well. My repeated requests for a Breathalyzer fell on deaf ears, I was escorted across the hall to the “drunk tank.”

The officer closed the door behind me and stated he would be back when he thought a sufficient enough period of time had passed for us to sober up. The bastard returned just a little under FOUR hours later. Chris and I had tired ourselves out by this time, all of the laughing and yelling that we did definitely sobered Chris up and I just didn’t care anymore.

During that time, I had asked the "nice" lady on duty for a blanket. This request seemed a bit odd to her, but hell it was a cold October night, go figure. I did recieve my blanket, it was what was on the blanket that I disapproved of. To put it lightly, the blanket could have gotten up and walked out of there by itself it was so crusty. And on a couple of occcassions we had asked for some toilet paper, cause at seperate times we both had to use the lovely drunk tank facilities. Hehehehehehe, we each recieved two squares of TP each. Even if we had put our winnings together, we still wouldn't be able to wipe one of our asses let alone two.

He peered at us through the door and stated that it looked like we had sobered up enough to be released. In his mind we still weren’t 100% sober, but we were enough to return to public.

We walked across the hall into the office we were in four hours earlier and were given our personal items back. I reached into the bag, put my shoes back on, put my Garth blonde wig and nerdy glasses back on and threw the pennies and lint across the room again, much to the displeasure of Mr. Police man.

“If you had been able to control your liquor consumption a little better, you wouldn’t have been here in the first place!” he said in return of me throwing those items across the floor.

“I had controlled my liquor consumption thank you very much, and if you had half a brain in that little head of yours you would have realized that I wasn’t drunk in the first place,’ I retorted.

The little officer man was getting a little angry now and decided it was in his best interest just to get us out of the station. He handed me a pencil and wanted me to sign a release form that basically released the cops from any wrongdoing. I politely took the pencil and snapped it in half.

“Number one, I shouldn’t have been here in the first place, number two there is no way in hell that I am signing this form, you can sign it for me, but forgery is a very illegal offence.”

He said he was done with us and that we could leave. Now, being dressed like we were the minute we stepped outside that station, we would have been jumped in a second. Mind you it was only about a 10- minute walk back downtown, but by this time of the morning, the dance had been over for a couple of hours, so we really had no where to go. Plus it was rather cold out.

I told the officer that since he was so kind to have driven us up to the station, he was going to be just as kind and drive us back downtown. He refused over and over until I told him we had no problem standing right where we were and annoying him more and more until he decided to drive us down.

He grabbed his keys and the three of us walked out to the car. Chris called shotgun and beat me to the front seat, so I again had to sit in the back. He drove us down to where Chris was living (Club Kennedy), Chris got out of the car and walked upstairs. The officer pulls away with me still in the backseat. After not noticing for a couple of seconds, I knocked on the partition that for some reason surprised him.

“Oh you are still back there, I thought you got out with your friend?” he stated in all of his infinite wisdom and chucked to himself at the end.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the backdoors of a police car do not open from the inside, and I informed him of this. He finally stopped the car and let me out. I had a few choice words for him as I walked away, and I continued up to Chris’ place as well.

The two of us sat around and got shittered over the next couple of hours, when I finally decided it was time for me to get home myself. I had a couple of hours sleep to catch up on, so I missed my first two classes the next morning. When I arrived at the college just after lunch, I wasn’t prepared for the welcome that I would receive.

I crested the last two steps up to the cafeteria, all of my friends were sitting on the other side in the lounge area, and they all stood up and started clapping. Once everyone else in the cafeteria realized what was going on, they as well stood up and joined in on the clapping.

“Jailbird, Jailbird, Jailbird” rang through the entire floor. I was greeted with hugs and high fives. I didn’t quite make it to my afternoon classes either, as everyone wanted to hear the story. So we all filed out of the college and across the street to the pub to chat over a couple of pitchers of suds. When I walked through the pub door, who is there sitting at the bar but my jail mate Aunt Jemima. The two of us, as well as everyone else that followed me over sat around and laughed our asses off at the entire situation, well into the next morning.