Sometimes my escapades could be on the more dubious side; sometimes they involved the police. This would become a pattern for a while as I grew older. There was this one time, while I was maybe 8 or 9, when I was visiting a friend in town. He was a good friend. I was always at his house, as coming to my house was out of the question; you never knew how my dad would react. I did bring him into my kitchen once to ask if he could spend the night. My mom was making bread, and my dad was just about to make tea. I was just behind him when I asked. He turned on a dime, swinging that ceramic teapot at my head. I ducked down, then Dad tried to kick me as I dove out the door. If Dad had connected that teapot with me, he might have killed me. After this, I never brought any friends into my house. Dad had been drinking that day. Unfortunately for myself and my siblings, he drank quite often.
Anyway, my friend and I had been playing outside, down by his house, and we found ourselves behind the Safeway store. It was just across the street and up a sand bank from his house. While we were playing around, we discovered a way to climb up onto the roof by using a drain pipe attached to the back of the building. Once on the roof, you could see so much more of our town. It seemed so much bigger from the roof. As we were looking around, we noticed a group of flags blowing in the breeze. We stole a Union Jack from the group of flags. Not sure what we were going to do with it, but when we climbed back down the pipeline, laughing about it all, we began to run towards my friend’s house. As we rounded a corner of the building, we came face to face with two young police officers. The sight of them stopped us in our tracks. They promptly arrested us. We were put in the back seat of their black and white police car. There we were, sitting in the car while the cops slowly drove us through town. We could barely see over the window sills, but watching the buildings go by was pretty scary. We had no idea what was going to happen. They took us to the little jail building that was across from the Fisherman’s Wharf, hauled us upstairs and put us in a cell. It was my first time behind bars. Now things were getting damn frightening.
It wasn’t often that I would guess that they had children in jail, and I think in all likelihood, we might just have been small enough to squeeze through the bars. After locking us up, the police called both our dads to come down. Our dads arrived, and they were pretty upset, not at us being in jail, but for why we were there. My dad frowned on stealing. I knew I was in for a sound beating once I got home, as Dad told me as much from the other side of the bars.
Our dads and the police had a long chat just outside our cell. We were listening with all ears. The police were saying that they needed to keep us locked up for the crime we had committed. Stealing a flag was a federal offence with severe penalties. Our dads were telling them that if they released us into their care, they would make sure we kept our noses clean. The conversation went back and forth for quite some time. We sure were hoping our dads would be able to get us free in the end, beating or not. After some deliberations and agreements from us to keep our noses clean and not steal again, our dads convinced them to let us go, and we were released. Of course, it was all a ploy to teach us to behave, and you know what, it worked for a while, that’s for sure.