My Life as a Kidnapper

Delving into the dark underbelly of crime is not a path that is taken suddenly or lightly. There are always mitigating circumstances, chance encounters, and, on occasion, a 10 year-old who assist in the fall of the law-abiding citizen and the rise of a criminal mastermind.

For me, my decent was carefully, expertly and meticulously planned.

The date was Thursday, November 23rd.

Thanksgiving Day to all the suckers who hold down day jobs, pay taxes and use their turn signal when changing lanes. For me, it was an opportunity in the works. When live hands you lemons, you make gin and tonic with a twist, shoot it down, strap on your Callahan full-bore auto lock and head out looking for trouble.

It never takes long.

Even less time when there’s a girl involved.

In this case, Justice, a ten year-old with a thirty-year chip on her shoulder, began by making demands.

“Can I go play with Brianna?”

Normally, a request like this is met with an affirmative, but today is Thanksgiving. Nana and Papa are in the house, turkey is roasting, potatoes boiling, and in general, it’s a family day. Lillian, my long-time partner in crime, denied the request.

Justice, true to form, pouted.

I looked at the clock. It was after 1pm, which is our usual time of solace and serenity, in which Justice takes a nap, and the entire house heaves a sigh of relief, and the neighborhood in general is thankful for the peace and quiet.

“Time for your nap,” I responded.

Justice through a fit. Not just a little fit either, but one of her ultimate-combo, Queen-of-Hearts-Off-With-Their-Heads fits that have been notoriously chronicled on this site. Consider: yelling that she wouldn’t go to sleep; yelling that she wasn’t sleeping; yelling that she hates this world; yelling in general. These are the markers of where the conversation had devolved.

Lest you think that I was alone in my irritation, Lillian had shut Justice’s door, and in order to keep it closed, had to stand station, holding the knob, while Justice tried to pry it. This means that Lillian has lost all patience, that Justice has gone so far beyond reason that she could star in an Aronofsky film, and that nothing is going to settle. In my family, and probably in some of yours as well, a parental unit would at this point sell you to gypsies, trade you for a rabbit, or spank you.

Since Justice is a foster-child, none of these options are open.

This is when running usually helps.

As you know, I love to run, and I can do it for long stretches of time at a pace that would likely kill most ten year-olds, and, according to the Fat America reports, most twenty year-olds also.

True, Justice can yell and scream when we go for a run, but she’ll run, and she’ll get tired and then she’ll settle down, and we don’t have to resort to beating her with a pillowcase of brass doorknobs and assorted blunt instruments. Once she’s sufficiently settled, and tired, we can talk, run our cool down home, and she will generally comply with whatever rules have been established for the day.

On this day, however, Justice decided to maintain her fit status, refusing to run, refusing to even go outside, and throwing a I’ve-been-kidnapped-by-a-mean-man fit outside.

“LET GO OF ME! I DON’T WANT TO GO! LET GO! LET GO! LET GO!!”

I ran on, unperturbed, and in a few minutes, Justice did calm down, and we were able to talk. She agreed that she’d been out of hand, that she really needed to take a nap, that she was tired and then we began to make our cool down way back to the homestead.

That’s when the cop car pulled up, the cop jumped out, pointed at me and commanded, “Get down on the ground now!”

I’ve seen CSI, I’ve watched cop movies, I live in Southern California, and I know about the LAPD.

I got down. I sat in the still damp grass, worried a little about my muscle fatigue, but more about the large, strapping man in blue with the semi-automatic weapon and the right to discharge large pieces of metal into my favorite skin.

“What are you doing?”

I looked at my running shoes, running shorts, running glasses and Wild Run IV: Run Through the Detroit Zoo commemorative t-shirt.

“We’re out for a run.”

“What about the lady who called in the report that you were kidnapping this girl.”

I looked at him.

Kidnapping? That wasn’t scheduled until Tuesday.

In an impressive display of self-control, I did not say this out loud. In another two minutes, six more patrol cars, all with lights flashing, all with large, strapping men wearing similar semi-automatic looks and weapons screeched to a halt and surrounded me.

Yes, yes, I’m that dangerous looking in my running clothes.

“Do I need to lay down, or is sitting ok?”

“Just calm down, sir!”

You may recall that I attempt to not use the exclamation point inappropriately. You will also note that I used one in the above statement. This should tell you exactly the disposition of the officers of the law toward me, the rogue runner.

Rogue. I like the sound of that.

“Who is this girl?”

“What’s your name?”

“Where do you live?”

“Who shot JFK?”

“Where is the Lindberg baby?”

Somehow, they even managed to angle the sun right through my Oakley sunglasses, so that I was sweating freely, and squinting against the light. People drove by and threw tomatoes. Not the fresh kind, either, but the ones especially grown for flinging at prisoners and Keanu Reeves-type actors.

Actually, knowing how the sunglasses make me look, I perched them above my head. Again, I had no desire to be “shot while attempting to escape”, as one of the officers suggested I might do.

I’m not yet fast enough to outrun a bullet.

So here’s what happened. When Justice threw her fit outside, screaming loud enough to warrant sufficient attraction from the general populace of Mars, one lady decided this must be a kidnapping and called it in. My erratic running path, a square along city blocks which had looped us back toward the scene of the crime (which proves that cliché) had proved the truth of said concerned-citizen’s phone call, and the police had responded in force.

When all was said and done, the officers packed up, and began to pull off, out to stop other evil-doers. Justice and I were given a ride in the back of one patrol car to the house and I can tell you, for the record, they are not comfortable seats in the least. The officer told me, “When we get there, I’ll try to scare her a little into not doing this kind of thing again.”

What could I say? The police were aiding and abetting in my continued abuse, mentally and physically of this poor angel of a child who only wants love, hugs and to do whatever she wants whenever she wants without considering the consequences to herself or others.

It was a good Thanksgiving Day.