I Have Live Fish and My Friend is not a Black Woman

The same teacher who was nervous about helping me learn to wrestle one-on-one was also a biology teacher who offered a little extra credit for anyone who wanted to bring a plant or animal into the school greenhouse and ponds that were in the center of the square of classrooms. My friend and I decided to go to the local pond and catch some blue gill and cash in on the offer. We went during the next period when we were supposed to be in class. We headed out to the pond with an ice cream bucket ready and a makeshift net made from some sports equipment that we rounded up in the downstairs of the school. We had only been out fishing for about half of an hour when we were set upon by the fish cop. He asked what we were doing out of class and we told him we were catching fish for our biology teacher. Which was true in the sense that he said that we could bring him specimens. Not true in the sense that he told us to skip school and go capture live wild fish and transport them contrary to law. The officer asked to see our id and licenses. We showed him our drivers licenses and had to admit that we didn't have fishing licenses per se. While he was looking at our licenses and making a little lecture about how we could not posses or transport live fish he made a astute observation, that my friend was not a black woman. We had in the recent days past been in a Air Force dog and pony show and they had handed out pamphlets that had the requisite and obligatory diversity photo which includes one of each flavor of person arranged by race and gender into a 'everyone is welcome' bouquet. My friend had noticed that their heads were the same size as his head on his license and he had carefully cut out the head of a black woman to paste carefully over his head on his license. It was a really close match and without careful scrutiny looked pretty real. My friend had actually forgotten he had made the alteration and was startled to realize he just handed a peace officer a altered id. The Guy was being a weenie already and now he started talking about the crime of altering official government id being a felony and that he may have to take my friend in. My friend was obviously not trying to pass as a smiling black woman so it clearly was a goof but Mr. fish cop still took the time to set us strait. In the end he ended up giving us a ticket for fishing without a license and possessing live fish. He did let us keep the fish for extra credit. Not a total loss then.