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This is a question I didn't do it

Chthonic wants to know about awful, terrible things you have definitely never done. But secretly have. Confess!

(, Thu 15 Sep 2011, 13:16)
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Police! Lies! Bloodshed!
Not sure whether I should post this.
It’s been 12 years, and just recalling this whole episode still gives me a little knot of anxiety in my stomach. It’s a bit of a long one …

As I’ve mentioned in some other posts, my father used to be a policeman. This brought a strange set of perks and pitfalls to my youth – colleagues of his would give you an “Ah, it’s you eh lad? Well go on, on your way” when they caught you drinking in the park, rather than driving you home to your dad (their boss). On the downside, if he himself caught me or my brother doing anything remotely untoward, we would feel his full wrath.

Consequently I had mixed feelings when he retired from the force. In a way it felt like a load had been lifted. He’d long proclaimed how my brother and I were ‘ambassadors’ for him when we were out and about, and it was a relief to feel that if we were ever in the shit in future, we only had our own reputations to worry about, rather than his professional one. But in an odd way I was very proud of him as a policeman, and I knew of lots of instances where he’d made peoples’ lives immeasurably better. Also, being a bit of a whelp (18) I was nervous about what would happen to our family with him retired. Our lifestyle was far from lavish, but would it get worse? Would we keep the family house? Would sacrifices have to be made? Could I go still go to uni? To my panicked and selfish young eye, it felt like a whole load of change was coming.

By chance, his retirement party fell on the same day as my last ever A-level lesson. We were both leaving systems that had become our lives, and the party was an emotionally charged event, held in a local hotel lounge. Like all good 18-year-olds, I got riotously pissed and danced like a fucking dickhead, before being overcome by the emotion of the night and sloping off to cry in a corner. My dad wandered over and gently suggested it was time I got myself home. I nodded tearfully, and set off on the walk back.

The walk back, incidentally, took me past the very college I’d left that day.

I remember swaying there in the dark, peering up across the basketball courts at the building that had dominated my life for four years, pissed-up sentimentality sweeping over me. And then I spotted something I’d never before noticed – the central spire of the building had a weather vane on top of it. An idea formed, and I staggered over to the nearest drainpipe.

Over the course of twenty minutes I grunted, heaved, shimmied, crawled, climbed, slid and scaled, and eventually was hugging the top of an incredibly steep spire, victoriously clutching a cast-iron cockerel. I had my prize. I should have just got out of there. I wish I had. But I thought “Fucking hell, you don’t get to do this very often. I’d best have an explore.” And so I found myself pottering around on the roof of my old college at one in the morning, cockerel in hand, marvelling at the unique views from the various departments. Until, inevitably, there was a shout.
“POLICE!”
I was suddenly lit up by a powerful light from below.

In panic I ducked behind a skylight, weighing up my options. With the true logic of a shitfaced kid, I knew what had to be done. They must not catch me. I took a deep breath, stood up, and illuminated in all my glory, I ran like fuck towards the edge of the roof. In my mind's eye I’ve falsely romanticised this scene – I see it in slow motion, the fleeing fugitive being tracked by a spotlight as he bounds towards the precipice and jumps into the night ...
Falling …

Falling …

Falling ….

SMACK onto the playing field 20ft below, twatting my face into my knees. Barely catching my breath I jumped up and took off like a maniac across the darkened field. I could hear a wheezing copper right behind me but I knew I was losing him, and by the time I’d galloped the 200m to the fence, he was way behind. I leapt over onto the road, and then made another stupid decision. Rather than carrying on running, I veered into a garden and crawled under the nearest bush.

The wheezing copper turned up about twenty seconds later, followed shortly after by two police cars. They knew I couldn’t have disappeared into thin air. I could hear about five of them milling around angrily just metres away. Then footsteps approaching. The crunch of leaves underfoot. And finally the awful, firm grip of a hand on my shoulder.
“Get up. You’re under arrest.”

I was terrified. “For what?” I asked.
“Suspicion of burglary.”
BURGLARY!
I felt my whole future drop away in a heartbeat. My stomach lurched. Fucking burglary. Burglary. Three months inside on a charge associated almost exclusively with smackheads. Kicked out of home. No uni. No job. No more mates. Just me, a convicted burglar. What a fucking let-down.

Then I noticed that the white shirt I was wearing was completely soaked with blood.

“I HAVE BURGLED NOTHING!” I intoned in my best ‘respectable’ voice as he bundled me into the back of the squad car. “I have been assaulted, officer, assaulted grievously, and I was hiding up there from my assailants.”
“We’ll see about that.”
I sat in the back of the car for half-an-hour while they pored over the school, looking for damage, signs of a break-in, discarded loot, anything that would prove I’d been up to no good. Thank god, they found nothing, and had to return to the car and formally ‘unarrest’ me. As far as they were concerned, I was simply a drunkard on a roof. I never thought I’d be so relieved to be officially declared ‘a drunkard on a roof.’
“Sir, would you like to make a formal complaint about the assault you claim to have been a victim of?” one of them asked.
“No thank you.”
“Well then, would you like us to drive you to hospital, because your face is a bit of a mess.”
“Yes please.”
When I had landed on the field, the impact had driven my bottom teeth through the flesh below my lip, leaving a hole I could poke my tongue through. A&E gave me a local anaesthetic and sewed it up as best they could, before sending me on my way.

The next morning I woke up in my bed. I had that glorious millisecond beloved by drunks everywhere in which your mind is totally clear, before the stupidity of the night runs in like a pack of starved wolves. I groaned pathetically, got up and inspected my face in the mirror. A fucking mess. My mouth looked like a worn cushion, bursting, black, with loose threads poking everywhere. And then my dad walked into my room.

He’d heard it all. Officers at the party had been paged. He’d suffered the ignominy of his retirement do being overshadowed by his son’s stupid, pissed-up wankery.
“Why were you up on that roof?”
“I was assaulted.”
“Bollocks, why were you on the roof?”
“Well, I thought someone was after me …”
“BOLLOCKS, why were you on the roof?”
I stuttered along for another few moments, before he cut me off with the line that probably made me feel worst of all.

“You know what, I don’t even care anymore. It’s got fuck all to do with me now. You’re 18, I’m a civilian. If you want to behave like a wanker, it’s on your head.”
Then he walked out, quietly closing the door behind him.

And afterwards all I could think was – I can’t believe I left that fucking cockerel up there.

I was a prick as a teenager.
(, Thu 15 Sep 2011, 16:07, 4 replies)

nicely written, click from me
(, Thu 15 Sep 2011, 19:10, closed)
I like this

(, Thu 15 Sep 2011, 21:09, closed)

Excellent stuff. It makes my teeth ache to read it but a great story.
(, Thu 15 Sep 2011, 23:20, closed)
Still surprised that my teeth didn't get knocked out
I think I had more calcium in my diet back then.
(, Fri 16 Sep 2011, 9:40, closed)

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