My 29th birthday was August 9th, 1985. It has always been a day of great meaning for me.
Michael Brown's birthday was May 20th, 1996. He won't be alive to see his 19th birthday.
The last 10 years of my life since high school have gone too fast and he was just on the cusp of the most exciting time of life.
The year I got my driver's license I was pulled over a handful of times. The first time I was driving through a speed trap at 5mph over the speed limit. The gentleman I had sitting beside me was very cool. I took off my seatbelt to get my purse from the backseat. The cop didn't care and whether you'd like to consider it a favor or not, gave me a seatbelt ticket which is a lot cheaper than a speeding ticket. And based on the goth look of myself, my car, and my long haired compatriot we could have easily been harassed or handed a stack of tickets.
I was almost arrested once. My friends and I were called "mall rats" when the mall closed at 9:30-12pm depending on the holiday season we would leave the mall and some of us would go to the woods to do drugs. Others of us who didn't do those things would go and eat copious amounts of junk food from IHOP in the middle of the night. I was called "the good one" by my mall friends. I was the goth chick nicknamed "death" at my high school. Contrasting perspectives.
One night after I had gotten my first car, a 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme that my parents had painted black for my birthday and I had affixed 32 bumper stickers to, basically begging to be pulled over. I offered to drive a group of 4 people to the hotel they were staying at that night. One 20 plus man, 2 teenage boys, a 16 year old girl, and me a 17 year old girl driving. I had never tried smoking pot at this point in my life. I actually thought at a younger age that cannabis was a drug on par with heroin and cocaine, thanks The War On Drugs. So this night the people I was with were not people I knew before that evening. I usually tend to stick to people I know for a reason.
I was young and I hadn't driven a lot in my town yet. I made a wrong turn on the way to the hotel and turned around in a dead end street. Then I was given poor advice by one of the men in my car to turn into a cemetery road while we discussed where I should go. I then turned off my lights and turned them back on to leave.
It was then that I finally noticed the cop car that had been following us the entire time. The kids in my car were preparing to smoke everyone's favorite bong, Bob. The only weed and paraphernalia was in one backpack that belonged to one 17 year old boy. They put him in the SUV cop car out of the 3 that showed up. They badgered me with questions while I had what was one of the many notable panic attacks of my life. They sat me and my friends on actual graves while they berated me. They checked every single inch of my car. Trunk, glove-box, whatever. I gave them permission because at the time I didn't know better and I literally had nothing to hide, no weapons, I had never even Tried drugs. My attitude was for all I cared they could take me in and test me. I was mainly worried about being late for curfew now and what I was going to tell my parents.
NJ had passed a law the year I got my license that 17 year olds couldn't have more than one passenger in the car. They wound up giving me a ticket for too many passengers and a ticket for reckless driving, a 4 point ticket with a huge fine, but it wasn't jail for the night, and it wasn't a possession charge that could ruin my life and really upset my parents. I had lied and said I was with closer friends, in another town. I couldn't even tell my mom the truth because of how stupid I felt for my poor decisions. Driving decisions and who I chose to keep company with that night.
I told my dad the whole truth. For some reason at the time he seemed the easier parent to talk to. The Graduated Driver's License violation accompanied the threat of jail time in the language. I went to go see a lawyer through my dad's Union contract and he could only represent me if there was a threat of jail time. And there was.
The day of court I felt sick. My dad and the lawyer were with me. I had on my best Catholic School attire. The lawyer met with the prosecutor and I was completely off the hook. This blond haired, blue eyed kid, who had never been in trouble in her life, who was in fact terrified of ever being in trouble, was going to get away with what other kids would be shot in the street for.
Screaming and crying at a police officer would have gotten me at the very least an arrest record, if not hog tied or shot in cold blood if I was someone else.
The police officer had made the choice to come to court.
His words, "I already let her off the hook." And in reality he had. Had I been someone else or he been someone else my life could be entirely different now.
Or over.
They could have said the drugs were mine. They could have not released my friend and taken his bong and weed without writing it up in the report. Cops stole drugs from me and my friends and "let us go". It happened to me.
Let's fast forward to 10 years later. I am 27. Suffering from massive depression and my family and friends have stopped calling unless they need to.
My little cousin, 7 years my junior calls me.
Weird.
No one calls. Everyone texts. Maybe it's an emergency. Try to answer and miss the call.
She calls again. My heart is pounding. It's late morning and this is a 20 year old college student. I answer and know something is wrong. Everyone starts with "can you do me a huge favor?" when something is wrong. I know this because I cherish the fact that I am the friend you call when you need someone. When you need someone to actively help you. Many people have asked me, "can you do me a huge favor?" I always say yes.
I'm wide awake now and throwing clothes on. She's at the State Trooper Station off the Garden State Parkway. Only 15-20 minutes away. Her boyfriend is in holding still for questioning.
They are 21 and 20 years old. He is a ballroom dance instructor, a tri-athlete, and he has a glucose monitor for his diabetes.
She's in community college, becoming a yoga instructor, works full time running a deli, and has traveled to both Africa and Guatemala to help those less fortunate than herself. She also has a panic disorder like me, it seems to run in families.
He was selling small amounts of marijuana for cash amongst friends they knew. On the morning in question his father was away for the weekend. Something I'd consider a community service considering the alcohol and violence related domestic violence epidemic this country has. They were mostly naked and sleeping soundly when their door was opened at 6am by a swarm of police officers.
Two morally innocent twenty somethings were woken up at gun point by a swat team. In a house with no other drugs, and no weapons. Not even the nerdy Ren Faire sword kind.
One of the men who had a rifle pointed in their naked frightened faces was another cousin of mine.
From my other side of the family. We all grew up together until our families started fighting about money around our adolescence. We had family parties every summer at my Great Aunt's house because she had a pool and cabana put in, in the 1970s when not having kids meant disposable income. That house became my own when my mother saved it from foreclosure in 1995. My Great Aunt even worked at a bank her entire life's career of working and still had a predatory bank loan and massive debt in her 60's. One of the family holiday's we celebrated was my birthday, August 9th.
The last time I had seen my officer cousin in a social setting he had just left the police academy. It was a strange family party, the family made many lame attempts at behaving in social situations for my Grandma Jackie before she died.
He was skinny. We were always two chubby cheeked red faced Irish kids and he looked hard and tired. And the only story I caught of their life that day was of him and his father, my uncle, getting into a drunken fist fight in a baseball stadium recently.
I had only seen him one another time in my teenage years. I went with another cousin, who travels from Florida to visit, up to the college of my cousin who was studying criminal justice at the time. All my cousins on that side of the family were finally reunited since the feud in our adolescence and they were excited but I didn't feel that way.
There was a lot of drinking going on, and I only had a little here and there by 18. I also hadn't experimented with any prescription drugs.
I know now that there is no point in snorting Xanax. It makes your nose burn and your snot taste awful. But scientifically you get the same or better high from absorbing it through your stomach into your blood stream. They were all snorting Xany bars which is all I knew of them as and I was trying to figure out how to get out of the situation when my best friend called and asked me to come get her because she was kicked out of her house and homeless again.
The first time she was 17 and moved in with our friend's parents, the second time she was 18. They ridiculed me for being the kind of friend who would drop everything while I was supposed to be partying to go help someone.
All young people have poor impulse control. We all make mistakes. That's how we learn. Older generations should teach and protect not magnify the adolescent decisions we'd otherwise be ashamed of. The life consequences we suffer are based on our social classes.
The white male child of a police officer, lawyer, or judge when stopped over a minor violation will be released with no consequence and learn that the world bends to their will.
Sometimes Appearance Really Is Everything.
Be My Friend
