The Drunk Driver, the Dumb Cop, & the Me

Normally I use this "blog" as a means of making fun of something I saw in the news, had read to me from the news, or just made up completely. Not this time. I thought I'd tell everybody a 100 percent true story about a little incident I experienced today. An incident I like to call "Something Gate."

Something Gate started as all my Gates do. I was standing in the street when I was almost hit by a van. Totally normal! I spend two hours of every workday as a crossing guard at a school in Manhattan (where people are apparently allowed to opt out of brakes for their cars) so I'm used to diving wildly from in front of burning vehicles. The driver of the van I speak of didn't follow the usual pattern of cursing and penal code quoting the others do, though. He instead came careening around a corner, slamming on his brakes and stopping about six inches shy of fat green dumpster that would've owned his world up high and forever.

After collecting his face from the windshield, he immediately turned toward me as I stood in the street, wearing a crossing guard vest, holding a stop sign, and gently helping an old lady, a toddler, and a Shih Tsu across the street. Okay, replace the mentioned street-crossers with one middle schooler each. It's not as precious, but it's still serious business, damn it.

The kids crossed the street, but I still stood in the middle of it, the van bearing down on me. As a disillusioned youth who still believes cars stop for pedestrians, stop signs, and pedestrians with stop signs, I didn't do that thing where I leap over the car and shoot my uzi at it in slow motion. Instead, I stared at the van and tried in vain to stop my fear from rising exponentially. I didn't shit myself! Mission accomplished.

I did, however, literally dive out of the way of the van. Not literally like "I literally jumped out of my skin." Literally like "Your girlfriend is literally very fat." As I moved through the air, I slammed my palm down on the hood of the van and yelled something about a hole the driver may have found to his liking. The butthole. And something he might find there to eat. Are we on the same page? Okay, I yelled "Eat butthole shits!" and I meant it.

Anyway, the driver stopped the van and asked the most logical question. "What did I do wrong?" his mouth said. His brain was on drugs. Painkillers, actually. We had a nice long talk about it, during which I discovered he had a vast amount of psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis and needs meds to keep that in check. Meds that make him incapable of driving, making sound decisions, or staying awake while telling me all this.

While I talked him partially off the road and lulled him to sleep with my listening skills, my co-worker called 911 and informed them of a person driving under the influence. The police dispatcher decided this situation was not important, labeled it "reckless driving," (a term I've always thought sounded like very good, nay, perfect driving), and we had the pleasure of waiting twenty minutes on a police officer to show up.

In the meantime, I had to sneakily remove the driver's keys and put the van in park while he slept with his foot on the brake. My boss ran over to the nearby Stuyvesant Square Park and asked a Parks Officer to come over and survey the situation, which he did. He even brought his McDonald's with him, but didn't offer to share it with me. The nerve of some very helpful people! Despite a snazzy green uniform and a go-getter attitude, the Parks Officer was out of his jurisdiction since the van was not parked on a squirrel. He did help us out, though, by calling 911 again and telling them this was a serious matter, and if someone didn't get down here right now he would eat a whole thing of fries. Part of that is a lie. The fries part.

As we stand around waiting on the police to police things, a traffic officer pulls up next to us. I flag him down (he clearly wasn't on his way to help us) and tell him about the situation. I shall print the word-for-word, no jokes conversation here directly.

"Hi, we've got a little problem with this driver over here," I said. "He's hopped up on painkillers and is driving really dangerously. He almost ran me and some kids over, and he doesn't seem to really know where he is. I've been waiting here for almost twenty minutes since we called 911, and no one's showing up."

"Okay, I need him to move his van," said the officer. "He can't park there."

"I know, but he's on painkillers and driving really erratically. He almost crashed into that dumpster back there."

"That's fine, sir, but you don't know he's on painkillers."

"Well, he told me he was on painkillers."

"But you don't know that. I need you to tell him to move his car to that parking spot up the street."

"What? You want me to give the man his keys back, and tell him to drive somewhere?"

"Yes, sir."

"The man who just almost wrecked into me and some children?"

"Just until the other officers arrive."

"Wait, you're not gonna help?"

"This isn't my division. Just tell him to move the van."

Aaaaaand scene. He drove off. Didn't call anything in, didn't stop to ask questions. I'm standing there telling a genuine police officer that we have a driver who is under the influence and almost hurt people, and his advice is to give the man his keys back. I'm going to assume, for sanity and safety's sake, that this officer was on a slow-moving mission of utmost importance, involving saving a princess from a diabolical regime of brain pirates, and his entire focus was on stopping the pirates from turning all of humanity into unpaid interns.

So, the story eventually wrapped up nicely. Some very good cops who understand their jobs showed up and talked to the man, instantly recognizing that he was unfit to drive. They didn't have any charges against him since they didn't see any of the mayhem, but they did put him on an ambulance and escort him to a hospital. In the end, I guess this story is really about friendship or something. The friendship forged in the heat of sleeping off your pain pills.