Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Well, That’s Just Spit on Your Head Funny, Right There

Way back in the days when we only had 8 kids, (instead of the 14 or so we sport now), I used to work nights, swing shift to be exact. I did this to cut down on child care costs while Reha was going to Law School. I’d parent whatever kids were around and then I’d go to work from 3 PM until around 11 PM. Though I also worked a few metric tons of overtime, so it was more like 3-1 AM.

One Friday night everyone had left. The place ran a graveyard shift, but late Friday nights, it was deserted. It was a printing company and instead of the constant hum and clatter of printing presses, there was dead silence. Plus, the pressmen had turned off all the lights in the press room and back in the bindery, so it was also pitch black back there.

Spooky is the word that immediately comes to mind to describe the deserted plant at night, but that place was spooky at night in the same way puppies are able to hold their pee, which is to say not at all. In other words the empty as a tomb plant moved well beyond mere spooky and well into creepy, scary and terrifying territory, completely passing spooky on the road to FREAKING YOU OUT-VILLE.

Also, there was an alarm. Last person leaving was supposed to arm it. This was me most Friday nights, and I have to say, “THERE WAS A PROCEDURE TO SETTING THE ALARM.” Yes, I’m shouting, even now remembering this fiasco. First, you get on the intercom and mash the “page all” button and say, “This is Billy Bob, I’m leavin’ and cuttin’ on the alarm. Call ext. XXX if you are still here.” Then you wait three to four minutes, because sometimes in a printing place, you can’t immediately get to a phone. You could be up on the press or something. Or in the darkroom, in the case of us pre-press weenies. If no one called your extension, you turned on the alarm and went off to get drunk or whatever you had planned for the evening. Oh, and you didn’t have to clock out until after you set the alarm, so you got PAID for those three to four minutes of patient waiting. Easy money!

Anyway, that’s how it was supposed to go, but of course, some people couldn’t wrap their ink stained fingers around the concept, never mind that the directions were helpfully written out RIGHT NEXT TO THE ALARM KEYPAD.

Just like this site, no one reads what I write. Me, bitter? Maybe a touch. Nonetheless, I digress.

On the night in question, I pack up my stuff and begin to head out at around 12:30 AM. I take a quick spin around the pin drop quiet press room, but they don’t pay me enough to wander all the way back to the bindery. You can see the outline of the dozens of bogeymen lurking back there and I’ve already got the willies, so I’m not going back there for all the tea in China, thank you very much.

Shoulder bag in one hand, leftover Arby’s 5 for 5 sandwich in the other, and having traveled almost the length and breadth of the place, my day is done and I go to leave. (This was back in the day, when I would deign to eat something like Arby’s; I can’t believe I didn’t keel over dead from a heart attack after every meal.)

I amble toward the pre-press door, but something is funky. The door is slightly ajar. I get closer and realize that not only is the door not closed all the way, but the alarm has been set. It’s blinking. I later learn this means the alarm has gained sentience and has taken upon itself to call the cops. SkyNet is scared and needs the police to protect it apparently.

I open the door and poke my head out and look around. Just my little red Honda sitting there. Nothing goofy at all. I shut the door and busy myself with re-setting the alarm.

“Hmm, points faulted. What’s that mean, I wonder?”

I put in my code. The door I’m standing next to is still “faulted.” I open it again and slam it shut. That’ll teach it. Sure enough, the door has learned it’s lesson and the alarm is saying all is well. I input my code again, grab my bag and my Arby’s 5 for 5 and head out. (You have 45 seconds to exit after the alarm is armed.)

I walked right out the door and straight into the meanest looking cop you’ve ever seen.

He’s also shining the largest flashlight a person can carry and still have it be considered portable and it’s on high beam, aimed right at the back of my corneas. I can’t see a whole lot, but in an instant I took in the whole scene. I can still see it now, lo these many years later.

Cop has the flashlight in his left hand, right up near his temples, pointed straight into my eyeballs. His right hand is on his un-safety clipped service revolver. He growls, “Freeze!” at me, though I don’t have to be told anything.

By the time he’d begun his guttural utterances, I was already on the ground.

He’d startled me SO BADLY, that I fell right to the ground. But not before making a small “eek!” noise. Yes, I did make approximately the same noise a wee little girl might make upon seeing a mouse or a roach. Though if a small girl had seen this guy, she might have also let out an “eek!” or two, mine was merely a couple octaves higher than a little girl’s voice, though you might not think that possible.

I startle very easily. But the combination of being spooked (scared, freaked out, goofy scared) by the dead empty printing plant and concentrating on what the problem was with the alarm in the first place put me in a special state of startle. Beyond mere “whoa” and well into crapping one’s pants territory.

As I’m falling to the ground, I can see that the cop’s hand is right there on his gun. I didn’t think to myself, “Don’t shoot! I’m an employee!” but instead I thought, “I’m holding an Arby’s 5 for 5 Roast Beef Sandwich and it’s in a shiny foil wrapper. I’m going to DIE because this hair trigger cop is going to mistake my leftover dinner of Arby’s 5 for 5 (which wasn’t even that good) for a weapon here in my right hand and I’M GOING TO DIE!” and then I said, “Eek!” again.

So I’m on the ground, panting from all the eek-ing and the cop is standing over me and yelling at me to keep my hands where he can see them, just like in the movies. Except I’ve never seen a movie in which the star is holding an the remnants of and Arby’s 5 for 5 sandwich. Plenty of movies show the hero getting the girl, but it’s the rare movie such as this one, where the protagonist gets bad take out fast food and makes squeaking noises.

Eventually, the cop lets me move and I get out my wallet and he runs all my info and I came up clean. The fact that I had the alarm code, a key to the building and wasn’t toting off with thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment might have helped, too, I suppose.

As I’m getting up (I had handed him my drivers’ license from essentially a fetal position there on the ground), the cop is smirking and the corners of his big burly face can’t contain his laughter.

“Is there something funny that I’m missing, Officer?”

“I’m sorry, son, but you just looked kind of funny while you were falling to the ground there. And you made a weird little noise.”

While I am still on the ground four or five more of West Valley City’s finest putter up to the scene. Including a K-9 unit, which made me wet myself a little. Frothing police dogs scare me worse than the boogeymen who live back in the bindery.

The cop, who still has my i.d. tells the other cops that it’s all OK, false alarm, but that guy over there crumpled like a sack of potatoes when I hit him with “the light.”

I didn’t say anything after that. I asked him if I were free to go and that I was glad I could entertain him.

The thing I can’t for the life of me figure out though, is how the pressmen (WHO NEVER USED my “mash the page all button” procedure, I promise you) got the alarm to arm in the first place. With faulted points like the sticky pre-press door, they shouldn’t have been able to set the thing. And you had to have a higher code clearance then they had to bypass the faulted points. Plus all the motions sensors would have been going bananas since I was still goofying around in pre-press. It’s a mystery. Though I think my SkyNet theory is just as good as anything else I’ve been able to come up with.

That question and the smirk on the cop’s face will stay with me until the end of my days, I fear.

1. I wish:
   * the cop had a blog, and posted his “side.”
   * I had a big shiny flashlight.
   * I had an Arby’s sandwich.

   Not necessarily in that order.

   And what is it with you and not following directions? Did he say “Drop and crumple?” No! He said “Freeze!”

   Unless of course you left out those little details. In that case fine.

   You’re just lucky he didn’t send you to the principal’s office.

   Also - these comment “verification” things - do you cherry-pick them? Because mine says ‘police52.’

   Posted by Radioactive Jam  on  04/10/07  at  04:38 AM

2. I love snorting coffee out my nose first thing in the morning.

   And I too am wishing for an Arby’s sandwich right now.

   And FYI.. my comment verification was “consider69.”

   Um, yeah.

   Posted by Blonde Chick  on  04/10/07  at  06:29 AM

3. I’m sure if he’d posted his side of the story we have heard about the dumb blond guy that wet his pants and fell down and how he and his cop buddies still laugh about that to this day.

   Now I’m going to go look at the captcha verification code. :-]

   Posted by jon  on  04/10/07  at  09:26 AM

4. Great story!!  I’m surprised they didn’t go in and check the place out anyway.  Hey, if the door was ajar, who knows...that bogeyman might have been a robber?  Robber.  Oh...you probably don’t want to hear that word for a while :-)

   Posted by Sirdar  on  04/12/07  at  10:06 PM

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