I once described someone as being so terrible that Mother Teresa wanted him whacked. To me that's pretty bad. In fact it is REALLY bad. It would take some doing to cause a thing like that!
Of course someone tried to crucify me for making fun of Mother Teresa. The analogy I made went straight over their head.
I routinely cut annoying tags of pillows, buy lemonade from illegal stands and hire underaged and unlicenced landscapers in the form of teenagers to mow my lawn occasionally. At the top of the Covid crisis I aided and abetted a little old lady in entering a supermarket by going through the door clearly marked 'Out' so she didn't have to walk around.
The latter paid a handsome dividend because I got to have someone's grandmother tell me , "They'll never take us alive!" as we went through the out door together. I almost fell over laughing at that one.
Most people fail to understand that the thing that keeps us ALL out of trouble is the local Thin Blue Line of police officer that actually use a little common sense enforcing the laws on the books. They opt to enforce the laws with a little intellgence and figure out what the law actually means and as a result actually serve the community.
A couple months ago I had a really entertaining chat with a local cop about some of my criminal behavior over the years. I also dragged HIS criminal behavior into it when he mentioned that HE sometimes buys lemonade from little kids.
"So you mean to tell me that you're admitting to knowingly and feloniously aiding and abetting MINOR CHILDREN in a known felonious criminal enterprise that has no business license, no tax forms and no health certificate, right?" I asked the cop. "You admit that you are helping minors embark on a life of crime!"
We both looked at each other and laughed ourselves silly. Finally the officer gave me a sheepish grin and replied, "Guilty as charged." He admitted that the system really is a mess when you think about it and both citizens and cops do at times have to muddle their way through a system that can get quite convuluted at times.
Practically everything we do can be defined as criminal if we want to dig deeply enough. If you drop your kids off with the woman next door to watch for a couple of hours while you take care of business you are handing them off to an unlicensed day care facility. If the kid next door is playing with one of your children and skins a knee you could probably be charged for practicing medicine without a license if you spray antiseptic on the injury and put a band aid on it.
Laws NEVER take common sense into consideration.
Often times when I take the sarcastic approach to this it goes over an awful lot of heads, mainly those with little or no sense of humor or imagination.
Most people fail to see things for what they really are and just so long as their little bubble is safe they pay no attention to things.
One of my fellow workers a few years back told me how his very small town department handled a grouch that kept reporting kids that were showing a little entrepreneurship. He lives in a small town in a small county he once described as Hooterville.
At first the depertment ignored his calls and finally the grouch called the county. The sheriff called the chief and the two departments hatched a devious plot together. They tipped off the editor of the local small town weekly paper and raided the offending lemonade stand.
Now my co worker, Dave, is a great storyteller so I don't know how much he embellished it but he described it as being a lot like the Blues Brothers. Every local and county police car they could get their hands on descended on the stand. The seven year old was pictured on page one of the local fishwrapper being carted off in handcuffs and surrounded by a half-dozen officers clad in riot gear and packing shotguns.
Dave said the reporter had to try several times to get the kid to scowl but finally he managed to bunch up his face and look like James Cagney in and old movie.
Needless to say, in a small town everyone knew what had really happened long before the paper came out and the paper posted a big tongue in cheek report about the bust. Dave said the letters to the editor for the next couple issues were priceless. The entire county thought it was great entertainment and Dave reported that police/citizen relations went up a couple of notches.
He said the letter he thought was the funniest was someone saying that the kid bought his way out of jail by offering the police a 10% discount on his lemonade.
Still, the fact remains we deal with a system that contains a lot of stupidity when you think about it. Kudos to the department that handed the lemonade stand with some imagination and a sense of humor.
A police department that responded to complaintsof speeders said they were taking care of it and posted a picture of one of their officers next to his cruiser aiming a bazooka of some sort at a passing car on their facebook page. Reviews were mixed, but mostly favorable. Many were rather amused and quite pleased to find out the department had a sense of humor. Others were indignant over the picture.
As I get older the more ridiculous it all seems.
Personally I have never paid a whole lot of attention to the laws and have never gotten into any kind of real trouble because I have chosen to live responsibly.
Still, I sometimes run into problems when I go after it with what it truly deserves. It deserves nothing but ridicule and sarcasm.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Update: I read on Nextdoor that the PA state government is now trying to push through a bill that would enable minors to open and run various businesses and other enterprises if it only turns a small profit. We need more common sense legislation like this. Kids should be encouraged to do things on their own.
Entrepreneurship is one of the pillars of our entire economic system and entrenpreneurship is one of the very things that makes us Americans.
Then again, in a way I find it disappointing because I will no longer be helping a small child embark on a life of crime. I was always hoping that by doing this I would be encouraging someone to grow up to help throw the tea into Boston Harbor.
Growing up we had a club called Junior Achievement. It was about entrepreneurship. You would go after school. sr
ReplyDelete