Dialing 911 on a payphone will call the police. Some people learned it in school, some may have learned it from their parents, but I, I went through the school of hard knocks as a kid and learned it the tough way. As a child, I had the curiosity of a penguin paired with the common sense of a house fly. These two characteristics never seem to fare well for someone when they’re by themselves, so if they’re paired together, you could imagine just how much harm it could cause. Luckily, I was around age 7 when this incident occurred, so the biggest repercussions were being scolded by my mother and spoken to by the police.

It was a scorching summer afternoon, about ninety or ninety-five degrees fahrenheit out, and the only thing I cared about was jumping into the community pool. After a relatively short but fun drive home with my best friend Marcos, we finally arrived at my house, located in a suburbia of seemingly identical, peach colored stucco homes. I lived in one of the five cul-de-sacs, each one containing five homes in a circle around a lone palm tree. The familiar sound of the garage door slowly rolling back to the ceiling filled my ears as it gave way to reveal a grey, oil stained cement floor. My mom’s dark green Toyota Sienna XLE rolled into the right half of the garage, stopping only at the sight of the hanging tennis ball hitting the front windshield of the minivan. As usual, Marcos and I climbed out of the left side of the van, because the rightmost side of the garage was lined with wooden storage cabinets towering towards the ceiling and technically, below my room’s flooring. My friend and I scurried through the garage door, into the living room, up the white carpet stairs and down the hallway to my room. We changed into our swim trunks, and within the blink of an eye we were downstairs with towels, swim goggles, and assorted pool toys: water guns in hand. “Did you put on your sunscreen?” asked my mom. We answered yes. A white lie never hurt anyone. And with that, we began our 5 minute journey to the pool. Dashing past the small jacuzzi next to our house, to the side of the tennis courts, and through the greenbelt was the path. My mother put the keys into the gate, and the second she turned the key and swung it open, we were off to the pool like race horses in the Kentucky Derby. Without thinking, we ran straight past the club house on the left, past the other jacuzzi to our right, threw our towels onto the table, put on our swim goggles and jumped into the frigid, six foot deep pool. The day went on as usual- splash wars, breath-holding competitions, and seeing who could do the funniest jump into the water. Somehow, during all of this, I managed to think up of a question which could only be answered one way. The answer to the question, “does a payphone call the police if you don’t pay?” should be obvious, but I was too naive to realize it. Without notice, I pulled myself up out of the pool, and slowly walked towards the looming Pac-Bell phone mounted onto the clubhouse wall, surrounded by a small, shiny metal box. Without thinking, I picked up the phone, observed the metallic dialing pad for a few seconds, and then dialed the numbers. 9-1-1. Bad idea. As soon as I heard a woman say “911, please state your emergency,” I immediately hung up. Bad idea number two. The phone continued to ring, and I continued hang up. After repeating for several minutes, it stopped. A feeling of relief spread through every single vein in my body, and I had thought this exciting experience was over until a black and white Crown Victoria pulled up outside of the fence.

A male police officer, about 6’2” walked out, and my mother promptly opened the gate for him. After watching them talk for several  minutes while I was trying to hide under the pool’s translucent surface, my mom called me over. “Did you call the police?”, she asked. “No.” The officer caught my bluff. Fooey. Like a dejected dog with its tail between its legs, I slowly drudged towards the peacekeeper, my heart pounding as if I had just ran to Alaska and back. My mind was racing with worry, wondering just exactly how long I would be in jail for, and if my parents would ever let me have a play date with Marcos again. Everything the police man told me slipped through one ear and out the other because I was too busy thinking about how to think of a plausible excuse for my actions, but eventually he was finished educating me about the severity of my actions and that they could have been answering actual distress calls. He gave me a silver and blue police sticker and headed back towards his patrol car. I was so relieved that the officer was gone and that I could finally carry on with my day. After another half hour or so of swimming, we all returned home and Marcos’ mother picked him up at 5:30- the usual time. My friend was gone until Monday when I would see him at school, and the law enforcement incidents were no more that day. To this day and from that close call with the polioce, I have learned that it’s okay to be adventurous to a certain extent, but to be careful because there will always be repercussions at some point along that path. And, although this whole ordeal had finished, I knew I still had to deal with a different type of authority called “parents”.