I just finished a performance and was driving home, carefully replaying in my head how well the show went. I was proud of myself.
Suddenly, I saw flashing lights in my rear view mirror. And, well, we know what that means. The excitement I was feeling about my show suddenly turned to concern. So I quickly looked down at my speedometer. I saw I wasn’t speeding, which terrified me, because it meant that I must have done something really bad. I slowed down, I pulled over and waited for a smiling cop to walk up to my rolled down window. This cop had a smile on his face that told me only one thing- he was enjoying his job far too much.
He looked at me and asked, “do you have any idea why I stopped you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but honestly, I, I don’t.”
“The reason I pulled you over is that your headlight is out. But as long as I’ve got you here, it appears that you’ve been drinking.” This blew me away. I had no idea what he was talking about because in my mind, drinking is just a terrible waste of good alcohol.
And then it dawned on me. He thought I had been drinking because, sitting on the seat next to me was a half empty bottle of 180 proof vodka.
Believe it or not, there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the vodka. Sitting on the seat right next to the half empty bottle of vodka was the device that explained the whole thing. Unfortunately, cops are not trained to recognize fire eating wands.
With the severity of the situation really sinking in, I looked back at him and I said, “you’re not going to believe this, but this is here because I actually just finished my fire eating act.”
He quickly spun around facing the other direction, trying to hide from me the fact that he was laughing hysterically.
He collected himself and looked back at me and said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that story. Do you mind if I give you a breathalyzer test?” What was I supposed to say? I agreed to the test. I blew into the breathalyzer.
The officer looked at it. He looked at me. He said, “wow, it smells like you’ve been drinking for hours, but I guess you haven’t been,” with a look of disappointment on his face, as if I had wasted his time. Clearly at this point, he wasn’t gonna let me off for nothing. He wrote a ticket for the obviously criminal act of having a headlight blow out.
The rest of my drive home, I thought about how terrible it was that I actually agreed to the breathalyzer. Imagine how much longer and more interesting the story could have gotten if I refused. But not to disappoint. This was a time in my life, before I was performing and creating art full time. I actually had what some people call a “real” job.
The next morning as I walked into work, the secretary looked at me and said, “Larry, Larry, I know you’re a fire eater. I have a story for you. You’re gonna love this one: See my husband, he’s a cop….”
I pulled the ticket from my pocket to show her. And then I watched her face as she read her husband’s name. Her jaw dropped as she realized it was me she heard about.