La policía y el himno

My roommate got stopped by the police today for what sounded like jaywalking. Then they didn't like what he said, or the way he talked or something like that, so they cuffed him and took him downtown, so to speak. Then they let him go. He said it's happened three times in the past few months and he likens it to yet another way the state shakes down people for money, and then he started ranting about budget cuts and Spanair and unemployment.

It got me thinking. I jaywalk a lot. It's impossible not to here, if you ever have anywhere to go. The intersections are all weird and angled and often you have to walk waaaaaay out of your way if you want to stay in crosswalks. I don't care if I'm not technically in a hurry; even if it's nothing, I always have something better to do than walk large circles out of my way. And, I like to have experiences that expose me to some new corner of life and give me a story to tell. Do I want to get arrested for jaywalking? Kind of; I bet it would be sort of interesting, at least in retrospect, and it seems unlikely that the consequences would be very dire. It would at least give me something more entertaining to write about than how much I suck at my job.

My main concern with getting arrested for jaywalking is the same reason I'm always doing it in the first place: When I'm walking I'm in a hurry, even if I'm not. Even if it seems like a good adventure in general, in practice I usually feel like I have something better to do, even if I mostly don't. Maybe if I really run out of things to write about, I'll block off some time and see what kind of trouble I can get into. Although, by the rules of my own stupid unchosen inherent belief system, I've just doomed myself to arrest as soon as I'm in an actual hurry.