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.
