historiblogography

john doe versus jihad 4-ever!!!

For years, Cooter lived out behind the bowling alley on Willowtree Boulevard, getting by off an insurance settlement and the income from the aluminium cans he fished out of his neighbor's trash cans. Cooter watched TV, spent a lot of time surfing the Internet, stared out the window all day, and drank as much cheap beer as he could afford.

And one other thing: Cooter called the police. Cooter called the police two or three times a day, reporting trucks with bad mufflers, people who walked their dogs through the neighborhood and looked a little shifty, loud noises of unknown origin (which was usually someone at the bowling alley throwing trash in the dumpster), and squirrels that seemed a little crazy and might have the Black Death on 'em. Once he called the police seven times in one morning to report that a crowd was gathering for a riot; the dispatcher finally sent a sergeant out to make sure Cooter understood that his neighbor's four-year-old was allowed to have a birthday party without multijurisdictional riot control in place. Eventually everyone who answered the phone at the police department got to know Cooter's phone number, and they got used to ignoring his calls.

Then one day a group of bank robbers swooped in on Littleburgh to take down the town's biggest credit union. But right before the robbery, one of the criminals dropped his gun in a gas station parking lot while fishing out his wallet to pick up a pre-heist tallboy of MGD. The robber picked up the gun real fast, but the gas station owner saw the gun and called the police. When the officers arrived, they realized that the car in that gas station parking lot was the very same Ford Fairmont that had just been used during a robbery in a neighboring town, and they arrested every single one of those bank robbers before they had a chance to rob the credit union. The whole town was very happy.

That night, Cooter was watching TV and staring out the window, wondering if he should maybe call 911 to report the Toyota that just drove by the house and maybe seemed a little hinky for reasons he couldn't quite put a finger on. Then a stray cat ran across the roof, and Cooter never got to report the Toyota, because he was running to the phone to call in what he was pretty sure was the opening moments of a home invasion robbery.

As he hung up the phone, Cooter heard the anchor on the TV news talking about the robbers. They would have taken down the credit union, she said, if the gas station owner hadn't called in on that gun. Cooter's eyes went wide.

"You see that?" he said to his imaginary friend, a shiny silver iguana with spinning lollipops for eyes. "That gas station fella, he called the police, and he saved the whole town!"

Cooter looked around, his face shining. He felt, for the first time, that his life had meaning, really had meaning.

"Always call the police," he told his imaginary iguana friend, pride animating his voice. "That's how me and that gas station fella do it, you see. We're a... we're a band of warriors, standing up to all the evil in the world! Him and me, stopping robbers and everything!"

The iguana nodded sagely, in an imaginary way.

And then the night manager at the bowling alley brought out another load of trash, and Cooter called 911 to report in on the sound.

posted by Chris Bray @ 4:23 PM