Deadline 6, Narrative Draft

The Foolishness of Feigning a Felony

My record was as clean as clean could be. It looked like that was all going to change that chilly December night, however. It all started out with me and six of my friends stuffing our bored selves with Taco Bell and talking about our favorite show on MTV, “Jackass.” It was at this point that one of us got the bright idea to reenact one of our favorite pranks from the show. We would tie up one of our friends, throw him in the trunk of one our cars, and let him pop out at a major intersection, making it look like he had been kidnapped. Well, it sounded funny to a bunch of seventeen year old kids, looking for a little excitement and a good laugh. Little did we know we would get a lot more than that little bit of excitement we were hoping for. We would soon realize that faking a kidnapping is a true act of idiocy.
Within five minutes of the idea being presented at Taco Bell, we had Brad stripped down to his boxers, tied up and gagged. This was going to be hilarious. When we pulled up to the light at McKellips and Gilbert there had to have been at least a million people in attendance for our little hoax. There were bleachers, if I remember correctly, that were just built on the sides of the road that were filled to capacity. Children were on the edge of their seats. There were even popcorn and cotton candy vendors selling what they could before the practical joke went down.
When it seemed like the intersection couldn’t contain any more cars or people, the trunk was popped. Brad came bursting out of the trunk, struggling against the ropes and mustering up a pretty good “help,” despite the duct tape on his mouth. He went running across the intersection in nothing but some dirty boxers that looked like he had been wearing for more than a week, a strip of duct tape, and some rope. It was a pretty convincing show he put on, but not convincing enough. So. Tim and I jumped out of the car, screaming at Brad to get back in the trunk, “Or else!” If our audience didn’t believe Brad’s performance alone, the show Tim and I put on was Broadway-worthy. All traffic stopped. The only noises that could be heard were the screams of me and Tim chasing Brad into a nearby neighborhood. And the sirens.
This was about the time that we realized our little prank might not have been very smart. We turned to see the police officer pull over the car we had just emerged from and we nearly got run over by our getaway car, driven by another friend. Almost immediately after hopping in our getaway car, a police helicopter was hovering above us with its spotlight on us. At this point we knew we were idiots. Within another two minutes there was another police helicopter hanging over us with its spotlight right on us. The light from those two spotlights was enough to make me think the sun had decided to come up a little earlier than usual. If having two police helicopters balancing above us wasn’t gut-wrenching enough, we turned around in our seats to see that we had a train of eight police cars closely following us. At the exact same time, all eight cars flipped on their lights and sirens, informing us of our need to pull over immediately. The people in this neighborhood must have either thought that this was their moment to make a cameo appearance on COPS, or that the circus was rolling through town, because all that noise and all those lights attracted every living soul within a five mile radius.
My already small bladder got even smaller when four of the police officers approached our car with their guns drawn, screaming at us to get out of the car with our hands in the air. We all got out and proceeded to get yelled at more by all sixteen of the police officers when we recounted our version of the “kidnapping.” After the police officers had called off the news helicopters, we had to sit out on the cold curb for an hour while the police officers lectured us one by one, until all those that needed to vent their anger had vented. Despite our stupidity, the police surprisingly found a little humor in our little stunt, after they had cooled down a bit, of course. My record remained as clean as clean could be, however, we definitely learned an important lesson that night: faking a felony is not something to joke around about.