graffiti on a cyber wall

Once upon a time in a rundown section of suburbia, a shabby convenience store and a sleazy late night bar faced each other across a poorly lit stretch of four lane highway. The few businesses on each side had long ago closed and fallen into disrepair.

One night, around 2 am, two police cars, lights flashing and sirens wailing, screeched to a stop outside the store. Their spot lights transformed the front of the store into a garish caricature of its self. The two fired up state troopers, guns drawn, charged into the store to find a long haired, bearded hippie at the cash register. The hippie quickly raised his hands over his head. One officer cautiously eased around the counter. The other nervously surveyed the rest of the store. The suspect was roughly frisked, cuffed, and shoved to the concrete floor by one officer while the other officer kept a gun trained on him.

After an extended period of unnecessary roughness and hostile questioning, the officers finally called the store owner who was justifiable angered by being awakened at that hour. He told the officers to let the hippie go. He was the new midnight shift clerk.

While removing the cuffs, the officers hastily apologized to the hippie. They explained that a passing motorist had called in a robbery in progress and they had responded to the call not knowing this was the first night the store had been open for the midnight to seven a.m. shift.

After giving the hippie a long lecture on how to keep from being robbed and killed in that neighborhood, they left. The hippie and the officers became great friends in the following months. They checked on him several times each night always leaving with him with their words of warning.

I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, I was that hippie.

A couple of weeks after I left for a better paying day job, just as the state troopers had feared, the midnight shift clerk was robbed and killed.