DailySusan Humor Blog

A 30-YEAR RIDE

Friends were sharing some of their college hijinks the other night, and one of them is still making me laugh.

Mike is big, tall guy. Naturally, his car in college was the biggest, longest Lincoln Continental on the planet. It took up three parallel parking places. It was lime green.

It wasn’t a car. It was a RIDE.

Well, one football Saturday, this University of Nebraska-Lincoln senior parked a carload of students in the alley behind a certain well-known bar in downtown Lincoln several hours before the game. You’re not supposed to park there, but things are different in Lincoln on a football Saturday. So they did, and left the keys with the bar owner.

They became very festive, if you catch my drift. Hours later they walked to the game, leaving the extra-long car parked in the alley, where it wasn’t supposed to be.

They came back after the game, somewhat sobered up. But the car wasn’t there. The bar owner said the police had towed it away.

Towed it away? On a football Saturday? That had to be against the law!

So the whole bunch walked over to the police impound lot. There was the lime-green Lincoln, parked right in front of the office, where a number of police officers were visible through the glass.

Our friend didn’t really want to get a ticket or mess with the authorities in his current condition. But he could see that the keys were still in it. The door must still be unlocked. He walked up to it, bald-facedly, and opened the door.

They all piled in . . . and boldly drove away, back to Omaha.

I just don’t know if I could be that brazen!

They kept looking back over their shoulders. Nobody chased them! Surely the police had recorded his license plate number. But, as the miles and hours passed, and nobody arrested him for the 47 felonies he surely had committed in that one act of rebellion, he finally realized that, for one brief, shining moment . . . HE HAD GOTTEN AWAY WITH SOMETHING!!!

He bragged about it for 30 years.

Finally, a few weeks ago, he ran into an old college chum, who was a year older. Turns out he had taken his first job as a police officer . . . and was in the group of officers who had watched our friend get in the car that day and drive away, without batting an eye.

The other officers all wanted to chase him down and book him. But this old chum said, ‘’Nah! Let ‘em go. They’re just dumb college students, and it’s a football Saturday.’’

So whenever you’re asked to give thanks for our law enforcement officers and all they do for us, don’t forget him -- he let our friend take his ride for a ride, and think he was pretty cool, for 30 years.

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Prayer request: An Omahan named Marlene has a husband who will undergo brain surgery for a tumor next Wednesday, and a son who doesn’t yet know Jesus. She asks for prayer for her husband’s healing and her son’s spiritual awakening so that he can be a source of special strength for her and her husband in this trial. Spirit of Jesus, descend on them in power. (1 Samuel 16:13)