22 July 2011

As the police officer approached our picnic table, we acted as though we were 17 year olds with something to hide, each of us grabbing our empty wine glasses and holding them beneath the table.  I don’t know why we did this.  It wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen us from his cruiser parked 25 yards away.  Plus they were empty so really, without any evidence, what was the point?

Fortunately, he was a very nice police officer, a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth when he asked us if we had been drinking.  It wasn’t that we weren’t old enough – each of us, with the possible exception of Gina, being at least long enough in the tooth to be an auntie if not a mum of this young, handsome officer – nor that we were drunk and disorderly, unless you count the occasional paper towel blowing in the wind – but that we were in a public park and alcohol is technically not allowed in public parks.  I say technically because after informing us as to why he was on this stake-out in one of the quietest neighborhoods in Seattle, his reason being having been called in by a concerned neighbor about the croquet-playing beer-drinking boys who had left the scene of the crime so quietly that none of us even noticed them, he went on to say that he really didn’t mind so much but that he had to make sure he was treating all of the park’s citizens fairly and perhaps we could just switch to plastic cups.  (Apparently secretly clutching our wine glasses between our knees didn’t get past him.)  Yes sir, Officer, we can do that, and you have a nice night too.

So it’s great we could kick off Gina’s milestone birthday celebrations with not just a bit of sunshine but a bit of action too.  Thank you, Suz and Carol of Magnolia, for arranging every detail and turning a special occasion into a night to not soon be forgotten, from the dinner and dessert and dialogue that filled us in every way to our brush with the law that will forever bind us in that remember-when-we-got-away-with-that memory.  It’s definitely good to be home.