Stupid Crimes

I've added a link on the side bar that goes to Court TV's Stupid Crimes page. In honor of that, I'll tell my own stupid crime story, that I was an accomplice to.

I was at a party on the SMU campus a few years ago. Like any party on a college campus, we were having a fun, loud, drunken good time. My good friend Scott mentioned that he had some bottle rockets in the trunk of his car. Why we told him to get them, I don't know. He brought them in and someone suggest that he light them. "No, you light them," he suggested (we were inside the apartment, not outside). Finally, I came up with the brilliant (drunk) idea that I would flick a lighter and hold it out, and if he should 'accidentally' get the bottle rocket to close, then it would really be nobody's fault. So, I did, and he did, and then the bottle rocket was lit. We watched the long, but not that long, wick start to burn down. After a moment, the hissing of the wick, as it approached the base of the rocket, made us realize that this could pose a potential threat. Scott screamed for everyone to get out of the way, as he ran toward the door with the hissing rocket......

I mentioned that we were loud before, and perhaps some of the other near by apartments may have become annoyed with our loudness, and perhaps they could have called to report our loudness.....

As Scott got to the door he flung the rocket, over-hand baseball style, and it immediately lit up and took off, and whizzed right by the police man's head. The police had, in fact, been summoned, on account of our loudness and just happened to be steps from the porch as Scott let go of the bottle rocket. Timing is everything.

The cop wrote Scott a ticket for possession of illegal fireworks (which he later got the charge dismissed???) and gave us a warning about the loudness. Fortunantly he did not decide to come in and bust half a dozen minors who were drinking. So, all in all, we felt like we got off pretty light.... and therefore, it took us much longer to learn our lesson about drinking and committing stupid crimes.