Status: Nothing To Report

Tales From Behind The Thin Purple Line

For many years now, I’ve walked the beat, stood guard, patrolled in a company-issued steel buggy and checked just about every door there is. I felt it only fitting then, that the name of this blog is inspired by the account that put me on the map and was my first introduction to the words, “Nothing to report.”

Back in the day, which was a Wednesday by the way, I roamed the countless grocery stores or the larger retail variety looking for the aisle-hopping evildoers who decided payment was optional when you wanted something bad enough. Keep in mind these are my earliest years in the world’s greatest industry and I was a young pup learning the tricks of the trade.

Working all by my lonesome, I found myself at 2130 hours looking to find a way to make time speed up. I’d landed on my third store for the day, four hour rotations, and I was tired. While the day had been thoroughly productive during my first two stops, this third one had just about as much nothing to it as the distance between two stars in outer space.

So, deciding it was time for some much needed refreshment, I notified the night manager that I was headed outside for a fifteen minute reset, purchasing a little caffeine on my way out.

As I exited the store, popped the top on the Dr. Pepper that would be my fuel for the remaining two and a half hours, I headed right down the storefront to the end of the building and stood behind the corner. This was common practice for us back then. Sometimes, patrons got to know faces moving around the store and there’s only so much aspirin and Mac ‘n Cheese you can carry before people start to wonder about you.

Standing in the crisp, cool Washington evening, sipping away at a hero’s drink, I spied a lone car further away toward the back of the building. To say the car was suspicious would be like telling the great Nolan Ryan his fastball was fast. They didn’t call him the Ryan Express for fun. Well, actually, they kinda did. Nicknames are fun. You get the point.

Now, I hear the naysayers in the nosebleeds calling out already. Isn’t that profiling? Why would you automatically assume the worst? Well, when there’s more clouds inside the car than above it, I’d reckon that’s pretty suspicious. Given the four men and one woman sitting amongst the clouds inside, the woman sandwiched between two bigger fellas in the back, my spidey-sense was tingling, as they say.

So, in my infinite wisdom at the ripe old age of nineteen, I decided to take matters into my own hands. After all, I’m security, I got a pair of handcuffs and a real badge that clips to the belt. I’m pretty tough, too. As I approached the car, a plan formulated in my young mind. Reaching down, I unclipped the badge from my belt (worn under a shirt, obviously), and deftly put a finger over the word Security, leaving the other word, Officer, exposed.

Steeling myself, I tapped on the driver’s window with the badge, something I saw on TV once, and watched a pair of half closed eyes turn and look up at me. Seeing the badge clutched in my hand, he became instantly alert. As he rolled down the window to greet me, I was hit with the smell of the Devil’s Lettuce so hard I nearly threw up. Trying to appear tough and holding it together, I looked through the car. The other three men didn’t seem all that concerned with a fresh-faced, plain clothes kid holding a badge. The driver, though more alert, was more doubtful than worried.

“Evening.” I said politely, glancing around the car.

This was when my eyes fell on the young lady in the back. While the other four were listening to music, smoking and just generally enjoying themselves, she was clearly not. She gave me a look that told me everything I needed to know.

“How can we help, Officer?” the driver asked me.

I smiled, not really knowing what else I was going to do. So, for the next couple of minutes, I engaged the group in a friendly conversation of what that intoxicating scent was. They made no effort to hide their vice, clearly suspicious at best of who I was and why I was there. They seemed to humor me for those couple of minutes, before bidding me a good night and the driver proceeding to roll up his window.

Before I could think, or would think, I stopped him, ensuring my badge was still in view. Looking back on this, I don’t know why I did things the way I did. I’m a larger specimen of a man. I stand a good six feet, five inches tall and, at my playing weight, as Dad always called it, I was a hardy and athletic two forty. My size has often been an advantage for me, just a hair more than being a disadvantage. In this case, it was both. On the upside, I got their attention. On the downside, I got their attention. You see, when I stopped that young man from rolling up his window in my face, the reality of the situation came crashing down on me in a terrifying realization. I was alone, unarmed and outnumbered in the dark, in the back parking lot of a Safeway grocery store no one seemed to care about, faking my way through a confrontation as if I was a cop. Let’s call it what it was.

You’ll see, if you haven’t noticed already, I’m a God-fearing man. I believe God exists, that He created the world in 7 literal days, that Jesus died and saved me from my sins and that I will eventually, when He calls me home, spend eternity with Him in heaven. That night, I seriously wondered if I was headed there quicker than the aforementioned Ryan Express. I started praying silently as the driver slipped a hand below his jacket, eyeing me. When he tried to open the door, I made the hero’s decision to kick it closed to keep him from exiting. In what could only have been God’s providence, the other three doors didn’t open.

That’s when the driver asked me a question I really didn’t have a good answer to.

“You got a problem, man?” He used another word, but this blog is family friendly. So, man it is.

I proceeded to tell him, stupidly, that he was engaged in illegal activity by smoking marijuana and, from my view, holding someone against their will. When his eyes narrowed at me, I knew I’d made a huge mistake. There was no pressing reset on the Super Nintendo for this one.

The hand under his coat started to move. The other three in the car started to sit up, as if they were going to exit, and as my eyes glanced to the young girl in the back I was, apparently, trying to rescue, the look of horror on her face mirrored the feeling in my gut. I found myself right in the middle of a big snafu. And, when someone asks you what those kinds of situations are like, you can tell them from me, time doesn’t slow down. It seems to speed up, like the quicker the train rolls toward you, the better.

Mercifully, as I was contemplating my stupidity and the proverbial end of that train that was undoubtedly creeping toward me, a police siren sounded once, accompanied by the glorious red and blue lights.

Instantly, the situation changed. You’re probably thinking for the better and mostly, you’d be right. Except for the part you’d be wrong about. Not only did the Lord answer my prayer, He did so ensuring I would get a hard-earned lesson to go along with my stupidity. As the police cruiser came to a stop, the four men in the car suddenly went quiet and did everything they could to clear the fog from their car. In a moment of either weakness or arrogance, or both, I looked at the driver and made a rather snide comment.

“Now who wants to roll the window down?” I asked him sarcastically.

The police officer who stepped out of the car was, quite possibly, the worst person to respond, in my mind, at that time. Of all the cops on the force in that area, an area I lived near at the time, I knew exactly one. I’ll give you one guess which one was now walking toward me with Heaven’s Wrath written all over his face.

And, to his credit, of which I would’ve disagreed at the time, he didn’t spare me from embarrassment. It took exactly three minutes for the area to come alive with a further three police cars. I was ordered, not asked, to stand by the wall of the store and not to leave. I was then unceremoniously outed as a security officer, much to the, uh, annoyance, of the car’s four main occupants. Some minutes went by but I can’t remember how long. All I knew is that I was in trouble and that time definitely slowed down at that point.

Then, the cop I knew turned and made his way toward me. He didn’t just walk. Framed by the headlights of a police car, I had a sense of impending doom marching right up to me. He was so angry he grabbed my collar and pressed me against the wall, further instilling in me the idea that I was likely going to jail. He somehow grew taller and I grew shorter over the next section of time as he laid into me about impersonating a police officer, going off into a dangerous situation by myself, not reading the room or noticing what area I was in, not calling the police, and more. Then, he finally asked me the question I did not want.

“Why?” There was more to it but Mama would be none too pleased for me to print it.

I shrugged, not able to meet his gaze. My answer? “I wanted to help the girl.”

The look on his face was not at all sympathetic. Knowing I could not have possibly seen her from where I originally was, he nonetheless made me walk him through the entire ordeal while others, police and criminal alike, watched. I did as I was told. Every time I would tell him my next move, he’d interrupt me by adding “like an idiot” to everything I said.

At the end, he jabbed a very painful finger into my chest and asked me again, eyes ablaze. “Why?” plus some other decorative language.

I shrugged again, unable to meet his gaze once more. “They were doing the wrong thing.”

My answer surprised me. It was dumb and it was vague, but it was what was truthfully in my head. And he seemed to realize this. While his demeanor didn’t soften, his voice did, just a little.

I could sit here and write verbatim every word he said to me that night. It is that ingrained into me. I will never forget what he told me. But, you want to know how it ended. Well, I’ll tell you.

4 arrests on a few counts and multiple warrants, 1 kidnapped girl rescued, 1 stolen car impounded, and 1 security guard who only found out at the very last minute he was not going to jail, despite a very clear case of deserving it. What was worse, he threatened to call my parents. You talk about the fear of God being put into a crazy, stupid teen.

But the keen-eyed observers out there will notice one missing detail. How in the world did the cops know to show up? Well, turns out, the night manager had decided he was going to join me outside, given the slow night. By the time he’d purchased his own beverage and made his way out to the usual spot, I was already at the car. Being an older, wiser man than myself, he didn’t attempt to assist. He simply went back inside and called the police. I found out later that he told them I was alone and that he feared for my safety. Truer words were never spoken. I made sure to give him a good, heartfelt thank you as well.

So how does that have anything to do with Status: Nothing to Report? Well because that was exactly what it became. I walked away from that with my pride shattered and feeling pretty humiliated. And, even though good results came from stupid actions, I wasn’t praised for it. Looking back now, it went the right way. It also scared me into a more conservative approach ... mostly. As you will see going forward, I was checked pretty hard by reality, but I didn’t always remember that lesson. Still, we all went home and continued on. And, it was well after midnight by the time we wrapped up. What a way to kill time, huh?

So there you have it. My first big post. My first story recounted and just enough details to keep it interesting. This was fun. We should do it again, sometime. Until then, stay safe, stay honest and for the love of Mike, stay inside during your breaks. There’s too many idiots out there to enjoy yourself, anyway.

That’s it. Mike Thunder, out of line and outta here. God bless.