Stupid things I have done, Part VII

Yes, I must, must lighten up the 2ww with a bit of my own stupidity, which always makes me laugh.

I've spent way, way too much time in a certain large E. European city, one that has its charms but also suffers from a quasi-police state mentality. That said, it also has a strangely small-town, down-home vibe at times, and people despite their busy lives take lots of time to hang out with friends.

One summer ritual in this city is the arrival of the watermelons. At little intersections and major crossroads, you'll see families from the Caucasus with a huge pile of the sometimes extraordinary fruits, stacked in what amounts to a melon playpen. They live beside their hoard, staying in small plastic tents and selling their melons. People have various methods for selecting the perfect watermelon, though none in the city were ever as astounding as the ones I encountered further south, where the melons were so sweet that they formed what looked like hunks of amber where scratched and made bees swoon.

One fine evening, I was with a gang of my buddies, some old friends who happened, oddly enough to also know my first husband, and we chose our melon. It was a very warm night, so we decided to sit out in the courtyard of my friends' apartment building (they lived in the same building) and enjoy our melon. We also had a little beer, and we sat on the curb by some bushes, drinking, laughing, and preparing to enjoy the watermelon. Our friend's baby slept peaceful next to us in a giant, old-fashioned baby carriage.

Suddenly, our little group was flooded with light from some car's headlights. My ex-husband brilliantly lifted up the large knife, turning it in the shafts of light so that it glittered menacingly. We were then greeted by several policemen, who asked us if we were planning to carve up the baby with a grim laugh.

When we said that we weren't, they asked for our documents. This is standard procedure in this city, something all foreigners fear. Though at the time, things were more relaxed there then they are today, cops could still get all in your face if they wanted to, and often claimed you had something wrong with your visa, registration, or other paperwork, and therefore had to pay a fine. Of course, that fine could be "taken care of right here." Nudge nudge wink wink.

I always carried my passport with me in the city, but at that moment, I had left it in my friends' apartment, thinking I wouldn't need it to go sit in the courtyard and eat watermelon. Needless to say, as the police went around the circle looking at everyone's passports, I began to freak out.

When they turned to me and asked, "Documents, young lady?" I stood for half a second with my mouth half open and then began spitting out a nearly incoherent string of phrases in the language I could normally speak quite fluently: "My documents... they are in purse... Purse, well, purse in apartments of, of friends! You see, friends. We can go and get it, if you'd like. Then I'll show documents to you, okay?"

The police officer interrupted me abruptly, "Young lady, cut it out. Speak normally!"

"I can't speak normally!" I replied, desperate. "I'm an American!"

At that, the cops laughed, and my friends laughed. Everyone had a good chuckle. Except me.

The cops let us go, telling us not to make so much noise and to go back inside. Which we did. My friends explained that the police thought I was so high or drunk that I couldn't put a sentence together. When they realized I was a foreigner--my accent in this language is pretty good--they thought I was hilarious.

When has your own goofiness gotten you out of a jam?