Sunday, as we were driving to mass, a car made a left turn on a red light directly in front of us. Leo swerved as not to hit him, the man stuck out his hand, middle finger extended. Returning from mass, Leo made a left turn during a green arrow. A car in oncoming traffic made a right turn on a red and nearly hit us. When we happen to drive along side of this car, the toddler in the back flipped us off. These events made me think a lot of things like, how society is surely crumbling, this may be a sign of the apocalypse, etc. (In a brief aside, Leo and I saw Rexella and Jack Van Impe on Saturday at Somerset. Leo thinks that if the Van Impes are maxing out their credit cards, then the apocalypse must truly be near).

In addition to thinking about the end of the world, I memorized these cars license plate numbers. This is a result of 25 years of watching crime and mystery shows. I am preparing myself for that one moment where I can say "Yes, officer, he was driving a 1978 impala, black, with red pinstripes down the side. The left tail light was smashed out. The license plate was HGO 696.". Then the officer will look at me with great admiration and say "Boy, if we only had a witness like you at every crime scene." Then I'd go home, knowing that I had been of service to mankind in general.

While I was repeating this common day dream, it occurred to me that I might have lost the first flipper-offer in traffic. We weren't close enough to him at first for me to read his license plate. I was pretty sure that I had tracked him, but there's more than a few 1978 Impalas in my neighborhood. So now we're at the beginning of the drug dealer story.

On day, in the fall of 1990, I was in history class in high school. The teacher got a call and told me to go to the vice principal's office (yes, Leo, that's the person who would assume principality in the event of the principal's death). The vp asked me to sit down, than she cut to the chase. The police had identified my father as a local drug dealer.

I was a little shaken. My dad's the kind of person who would, and has, painted the dining room while wearing a suit. He didn't drink regularly, and quite frankly, has just doesn't have the sales or marketing skills to deal drugs. So I challenged the vp (whose name rhymes with "crack-yearn", in case you are familiar with DHS). It turns out that one of our security guards, Lenny, had seen a 1984 blue escort in the parking lot, selling drugs to kids. He then went to get "backup" (his 80 pound female partner). Then he saw that same escort turning onto a street in the neighborhood. He wrote down the license plate number; it turns out that it was my dad.

The police were dispatched to my house, where it turns out that my dad had come home to take care of my sister, who was home sick. Obviously, my dad was not a drug dealer, but Lenny-the-genius security guard had mistaken his car for that of the drug dealer. On that note, approximately 1 in 3 Dearborn residents at that time drove a blue escort, but that never occurred to Miss Blackburn, or um, crack-yearn, I mean. So it was all a case of misidentification. We never got to do a group laugh at the end, and the DHS folks never apologized, so I still feel like there's no closure.