Monday, January 14, 2013

The day I rode a cop car

Well, this is not a memory from my youth but one that happened around three and a half years back, at the ripe old age of 58.
I was in the US to help out with my son and daughter-in-law, on the birth of my granddaughter.  But in between that, I took a short break with my brothers over in the Los Angeles area.  Well, a niece very kindly offered to take me out to listen to some music--Latin music, which I love.  As it was summer, it was street music.  We duly parked in a free parking lot--around 7pm this was--and went to enjoy the music.
After enjoying the sounds and sights, we decided to leave.  By this time the parking lot area was more or less deserted.  We walked through the indoor lot, and oh dear, we just could not remember where the car had been parked.  All we could both remember was that it was in a corner.  We walked around on several floors for about 15 mins and no car!  It was a fairly expensive car and so my niece was convinced it had been stolen--after all this was like a downtown area and it was certainly not early evening.  So first my niece rang her dad and then called the police and then we waited on the street outside the parking lot, on the street.  The only thing open near bye was a tanning parlor--at around 9 pm!  As we waited we found we were getting strange looks from some passers-by, male of course.  By this time my niece was getting frantic at the non-arrival of dad/and or members of the police force.
Finally her father arrived.  Now, I forgot to mention, neither of us knew/remembered the number of the car.  So, the first thing that was done, on arrival of my brother, was to get the car number.  Just then a police car came and asked whether it was us that had reported a missing car.  On being told that we were, he asked for the number of the car.  Then he asked my niece to get in for one more ride around the parking lot.  She insisted that the car was not in the lot.  But he said, what's to lose by one more ride around the parking lot.  She then asked one of us to please get in with her, as she didn't want to ride alone.  So I promptly got in the back,as, after all, I felt this was a rare opportunity to experience the hospitality of the LAPD.  While we were getting in, we got even stranger looks from the passers-by than earlier, as you can imagine.  After all, what would you expect, when a cop car stops and makes 2 women get into the car late in the evening....
Now friends, I don't know if you know this already, but there are no cushioned seats in the back of an LAPD cop car!  It was a shock to find I was sitting on hard blue metal.  I kept moving, trying to find a comfortable spot on the metal, but with no luck.
By this time we had taken a turn through the lot and lo and behold there stood the car in the dim light.  The young policeman was triumphant and both of us felt extremely foolish.  We proceeded to apologize profusely, which made him grin even more widely and then he left, after which we got into the recovered car and drove home.
Now there is an even funnier postscript to this.  I had taken a camera with me and when we got home, I found the camera was not with me.  It had been left in LAPD's luxury limo!!!  So there was my brother--at 10.30 pm, calling the police dept office to find out if there had been a camera in a cop car.  We were told that the camera had been found at left at the main Police Dept office in the area we had visited, but that we would have to come and fetch it then itself as the next day was Sunday and the office would be closed.  Hence, my poor brother made his second trip all the way there, with me, to the particular office and then we had to wait, till the young policeman came in for a break, to claim my camera.  It wasn't that this camera was a fancy camera.  It was just that I had  quite a few pictures in it of my new granddaughter and family in general.  So anyway, a long and eventful evening filled with interactions with the LAPD.

4 comments:

  1. What a wonderful story, Sue - and it was the LAPD too! Brilliant! You just couldn't make up this kind of stuff! I know it must have been agonisingly embarrassing at the time (don't I know it) but it's just the perfect humorous story to recount:)

    Ps -I had no idea the backs of LA police cars were like that - those US cops are more brutal than I thought:))

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  2. ha ha Sue - in retrospect the story is hilarious ! hard metal seats ? OMG - I agree with Mrs T here !

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  3. I can't tell you what a shock it gave me to slide in and find this hard seat. As I remember, there was a grill too, separating the front and back! The whole thing was hilarious, like a movie :-)

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  4. That is a story that has a lot of telling in it. Something to tell the grandkids when they grow up :-)

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