I should have combed my hair.

 

It started out as a simple walk around the block.  The things I expected to see along the way were a few neighbors, usually several wild turkeys and of course a barking dog here and there.

What I wasn’t expecting was to be stopped by a passing police car.  At first, I thought it was just a neighborhood watch patrol, but it wasn’t.  This was an actual cop and now he was out of his car and asking me for identification.  I explained that I lived here, just a few houses back a ways and that I didn’t bother to carry my ID with me because, like I said, I live here.

He said that I matched the description of someone they were looking for and for me to get into the backseat of his patrol car.  “I’m not really comfortable doing that, why don’t you follow me back to my house and I’ll show you identification.”

Now I could see some people coming out on their porches.  I’d seen them before and waved hello before during my walks, but I didn’t really know them.  They weren’t saying anything, or waving.  They were just standing there watching, probably wondering what I did to cause the police to stop me. 

This whole thing reminded me of a movie I once saw called, The Trial.  There was a wrongly accused man in that story, being questioned about a half-circle spot worn in the tile floor.  The worn area was towards the back of a barber chair.  I couldn’t believe they were asking him about that.  They apparently didn’t comprehend the travel patterns of barbers.  They only walked in half-circles.

I had never felt so close to the edge of chaos before.  This person could potentially haul me in for questioning, take my fingerprints, and snap my picture for a mugshot.  I could end up in a book of mugshots, maybe even have my picture up on some wall.