Bonnie and Clyde

I suppose I can blog about this now. When Alan and Lucy and I came back from Washington in June, we only had a few hours peace when a knock came at the door. Alan answered it while I changed out of my PJs. It was the cops, and they looked none too happy.

Now I have no respect for cops. Aside from my mother's brother-- who has too much of a brain to have been really cut out for it-- all the police I've encountered are generally small-minded and quite dense. So to see one standing in my living room, trying to intimidate us with his flab and jowls, put my blood pressure through the roof almost immediately.

To make matters worse, he starts asking questions about our whereabouts on such and such a date at whatever time. It happened to be the morning we drove to the airport, when we'd filled up on gas at a station where the alarm was buzzing. We thought we weren't allowed to pump gas at that time of the morning but I suppose the store was being robbed at that very moment.

So the big ugly cop tells me they have a picture of Alan walking into the store (which he didn't do) and wanted us to show him where we might be hiding the cartons of stolen cigarettes (which we obviously didn't have). Alan showed the guy around. He asked if we smoked, we said no. He asked why we had matches in our bathroom then. Alan answered to burn up the poop smell. The ugly cop said he didn't follow what Alan was saying. We tried to explain it again-- speaking very slowly and using small words-- but he just proceeded to talk about how if Alan had a confession he should give it to him sooner than later.

He actually told Alan "The deals get worse from here on out." Someone watches too much Law and Order!

He and the not-so-bad cop from our town finally left. And that was the last we heard of it. I can't imagine they ever had anyone on tape that looked like Alan-- people here ask all the time "What is he?" as if they've never seen a mixed race person before. When they venture a guess they sometimes ask if he's Russian or Middle Eastern-- no one in these parts looks like my husband.

We were rattled at first as this area has one of the highest rates of wrongful accusations in the country. But I suppose it has all blown over now and they caught the little punk who really did it.

Hopefully that was our first and last brush with the law.