It’s nice to be voted the Most Handsome Cop on the Force. A couple nights ago, we had a contest at the Police Station, and I won the top prize, plus the awards for Best Hair and Most Manly Chest. For all this, I was presented with a sunken concrete swimming pool filled with blue water, plus a tennis court and a lovely fighter jet. The pool also came with a set of fluffy white towels.
So I was happy the next morning, when my partner, Officer Tanya, picked me up.
“You sure look chipper,” she said, when I got into the police cruiser.
“I am,” I replied with a smile, “cuz I won all that stuff.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to concentrate on fighting crime today?” said Officer Tanya. “Or am I going to need to keep nudging you so that you stop daydreaming during chase scenes; and then remind you to unholster your weapon when we’re doing a drug bust?”
I laughed and said: “I’ll be fine; I know that my fun new possessions will be awaiting me when the workday’s over — I won’t be preoccupied.”
“Then shall we dive right in and take our first distress call?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said; then I picked up the hotline and cheerfully greeted the caller: “Officer Bryan Ray speaking. May I take your order?”
“Yes,” said the caller, “I’m having trouble with a group of teenagers — they’re loitering in my shop, and I’m afraid they’re scaring other customers away, because their appearance is less than respectable.”
“Do you mean they’re wearing T-shirts instead of collared, button-ups?” I asked.
“That’s right,” said the voice; “I’m impressed — you’re darn good at your job.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. “I’ve been on the Force for forty-five years now; so I’ve picked up a thing or two about fighting crime. However, tell me: How do you know these kids are not paying customers themselves? And what is your name?”
“Oh, sorry; my name’s Tobias,” said the shop owner. “And I guess I just assumed that these kids were not intending to buy any of my products, because they’re all only thirteen years of age, and a person must be at least twenty-one to purchase cigarettes in Minnesota.”
“You sell nothing more than cigarettes, Mister Tobias?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “and related products, you know: cigars, cigarillos, blunts, chew, pipes…”
“Ah,” I exclaimed, “you must be the proprietor of that shop called Tobias Tobacco — I see your sign at the mini-mall, every time I visit the tanning booth.”
“Yes, that’s me!” said Tobias. “Oh, and I think I see you pulling up right now — are you driving a Ford Crown Victoria?”
“Bingo!” I said. “Here, I’ll flash the lights as we look for a parking spot…”
“Oh, look at that!” said Tobias. “But wait, don’t bother driving around the lot — just park in the ‘5 minutes only’ spot, right in front of my shop.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “We usually try to avoid doing that, because we can never guarantee that we’ll be able to de-escalate the situation fast enough to remove our vehicle in time — often it takes ten or fifteen minutes, depending on each culprit’s willingness to listen to reason.”
“No, no, don’t worry about that,” said Tobias; “if it takes a little longer than five minutes, I won’t call the police — for Pete’s sake, look what I’m saying: You ARE the police!”
I laughed at this observation, as Officer Tanya pulled our cop car into the parking spot directly in front of Tobias Tobacco. We then climbed out of our windows and entered the shop thru its sliding glass doors.
I waved at the man behind the counter and said: “Howdy, sir! You must be Tobias.”
“Yes, hello,” he said. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Officer Tanya drives fast,” I said, motioning to my partner. “This is Officer Tanya. Tanya, Tobias here is the owner of this shop.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Tanya slightly tipped her cop cap.
I then noticed the group of five teens who were gathered in front of the rolling papers. It wasn’t necessary to ask Tobias if these were the troublemakers he had called about, for they were the only other people in the store. I removed my hat and held it against my chest as I approached these kids.
“Excuse me,” I addressed the group; “I’m Officer Bryan Ray, of the Eagan Police. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble — not yet, anyway. If you cooperate, everything will turn out fine. We might even be able to get out of here without violating the five-minute parking rule. (I’m sorta half-joking about that, because Tobias, the man over yonder who owns this establishment, already gave my partner Tanya & me permission to leave our squad car there for however long that we need.) Now, here’s my question for you: Why are you thirteen-year-olds hanging out here, when you know that the law says you must be at least twenty-one years of age to buy tobacco products?”
“Thirteen?” said one of the kids. “Where’d you get THAT? We’re all nineteen — and it’s eighteen to smoke; so we’re all totally legal.”
“You’re all nineteen-year-olds?” I was shocked. “I find that hard to believe.”
“You wanna check our IDs?”
I was taken aback by this. I didn’t want to be rude, but my curiosity was piqued. “You know what, I think I do want to see your IDs,” I said; “if you’re willing to show them to me — I mean, I don’t want to harass you, but I’m seriously skeptical that you could all be so much older than Tobias reported.”
“That dude thought we were thirteen?” said the kid who had been doing the talking, as he handed me his card.
I scrutinized each teen’s ID, and, sure enough, the dates all checked out. “Wow,” I said, “it looks like you’re right.” Then I turned to Tobias, the shop’s owner, and addressed him in a slightly louder voice: “Toby, your assumption was a little off: You guessed low — thirteen is the youngest a person can be and still technically qualify as a teenager; whereas these kids are all actually nineteen, which is the oldest age that still qualifies — for, in a year, they’ll all turn twenty; which is not a teen number. (They just let me see their ID cards, so I know this to be a fact.)”
Tobias stood behind the counter looking perplexed for a while; then he replied: “Ah, I’m sorry… I guess my guess was wrong, then. — However, nineteen is still not old enough to buy cigarettes.”
“Yes it is: eighteen is the cutoff,” said one kid confidently.
I myself now jumped back into the discussion and answered: “No; I don’t think so. I was going to mention this, after you first asserted it, but then I got carried away looking at all your ID cards. I’m pretty sure that one must be eighteen to purchase pornographic magazines or get married, but you gotta be twenty-one to drink alcohol; and you can get your permit to drive a motorized vehicle at sixteen, provided that you’re accompanied by a licensed adult; but you can work in fast food at fourteen (I know this, because, before I became a policeman, I was employed at a Burger Joint for several years: that was my very first job; then I worked at a Taco Place for several more years); but, as far as cigarettes go, although the required age used to be eighteen, they recently increased it to twenty-one, so as to deter children from becoming addicted to nicotine.”
All the teenagers who were standing there in Tobias’ Tobacco Shop looked crestfallen, after my speech. This made me feel bad for them, so I said:
“I feel bad for you now, but it’s my duty to enforce the law. Don’t look so glum — you only need to wait two more years, and then…”
“But we are depressed about the future — the way things are going, who knows if we’ll all even HAVE another two years!” interrupted one of the teens who had lost all patience with me. “You must admit, officer: There is nothing on the horizon resembling the possibility of human life for those of us who are young today.”
I was dumbstruck by this. I couldn’t answer: The kid was right again.
Officer Tanya now spoke up: “Listen, teenagers; how about my partner Bryan and I purchase some tobacco products ostensibly for ourselves, but then, when we all leave the shop, he and I will just give you all the stuff that we bought: We’ll call it an early Christmas present, or whatever holiday you prefer.”
My eyes widened and I said to Officer Tanya: “That’s a wonderful idea! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You did,” smiled Tanya; “you just don’t remember the last time we got a similar call. It wasn’t Tobias Tobacco — I forgot the name now: it was that Cigarette Shop near your mom’s house, off Slater Road — we got a similar distress call from the owner over there, and the kids’ ages ranged from fifteen to seventeen, and you solved the matter by simply buying them what they wanted, and everyone was satisfied. So I actually took this idea from you; but you’ve de-escalated so many situations in your cop-career that you tend to lose track of the solutions that you’ve struck upon. You should record your thoughts in a diary, to help you remember.”
I smiled and laughed when I heard this, then I replied: “You know what? I will do that — that’s an excellent idea: I’ll start keeping a journal of all the crime-fighting techniques that work, so that I can re-use them in the future.”
“What future,” murmured one of the teens.
“Hey, no more moody brooding,” I lifted the kid’s chin up with my gloved cop-finger. “We’re doing you a favor here — now please try to feign a little gratitude.”
The kid sighed and made a half-smile; then he shrugged and said: “Alright, officer. We’ll wait for you in the parking lot.”
So my partner Tanya and I stocked up on blunts, cigars, cigarillos, menthol cigarettes, all sorts of chew and dip, plus loose leaf tobacco, and we also bought several corncob pipes. The shop’s owner Tobias put our items in a couple large plastic bags, and we met back up with the kids outside.
“Here you go,” Officer Tanya and I handed over our gift to the pack of teenagers. Then I added: “Hey, kids, my partner Tanya and I must respond to more distress calls today; so we’ll be busy till sundown; but, if you like, we can give you a lift in our squad car and drop you off at my ranch-house — I just won a contest and got a sunken concrete swimming pool installed in my backyard; also I have a brand-new tennis court and a black fighter jet. Do you think that you’d like to spend the day smoking and playing around at my place? All I ask is that you leave before 9 p.m., because that’s my bedtime.”
The kids perked up a little and answered: “Are you serious? Yeah, that’d be cool.”
So we dropped the teens off at my house, and they spent the day smoking and swimming and playing tennis and driving my airplane, while Officer Tanya and I were out fighting crime. — Then, when I returned, I was relieved to discover that the kids had been polite enough to tidy up the place before they left. (They must’ve called a ride-sharing service, to taxi themselves away; for they were gone before I arrived home at a quarter after seven.) — Just to satisfy my curiosity about how their day went, I checked the camera footage from my security system and saw that the teens used all the facilities and took the plane out multiple times; but none of my property was stolen or damaged, and they even mowed my lawn.
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