Mistaken Identity
But the very hairs of your head are
all numbered.
-- Matthew 10:30
It's a good thing
we have a perfect God who can keep all of us straight and know who's who 'til
we get up to heaven. It's not quite that way here on Earth.
Take what happened
last week to my beloved. He's a conscientious, law-abiding captain of industry,
owner and president of his company. That's why it was a surprise when one of
his employees burst into his office and exclaimed, "There's a cop downstairs
looking for you, and it sounds serious!"
AA-OO-GAH! DIVE!
DIVE!
It seems his red
Durango SUV had been spotted bashing into a mailbox on 29th and Douglas
Streets in downtown Omaha a little over an hour earlier. The business manager
had jotted down the license-plate number and called 911. A policeman had
tracked the car to my husband's company. Now he wanted the facts. Just the
facts.
"But . . . but . .
." my husband sputtered, "I wasn't anywhere NEAR there today. I know I'm
getting old, but I THINK I would have remembered running over a mailbox."
The policeman
asked, "Could someone have been using your vehicle?"
"No, I was in it all
through the lunch hour, and parked it back here just about 20 minutes ago."
The policeman
squinted at him, no doubt thinking: "Suuuuuuure. We've got you dead to rights, you
closet vandal. You're goin' DOWN!"
They looked at the
Durango. There were a few chinks on the driver's side door that the cop said
would be consistent with the mailbox caper. "What?!?" my husband protested.
"Those are consistent with the fact that this car has 80,000 miles on it!"
Sigh. Law
enforcement can be tedious when dysfunctional suspects live in a world of
denial. "OK, then, let's go to the scene," the policeman said, adding silently,
no doubt, "you lying scumbag."
The . . . SCENE? This
cop was serious! My husband was perplexed. Was he going crazy? Was this some
kind of practical joke?
Upon their
arrival, a bunch of people came out to glare at the dirty, rotten scoundrel who
had viciously attacked their poor, defenseless mailbox and snapped that $10
post in two.
They were lining
up the crunched mailbox with the tiny chinks on the driver's side door, and my
husband's out-of-body experience was at its peak, when the business manager
came out and said:
"No, that's not
the guy. The driver was Hispanic-looking."
WHAAAT?!?
Could a
Hispanic-looking guy have stolen his car, rushed over and bashed this mailbox,
and then returned the car, leaving without a trace?
And if so, WHY?!?
It was an orgy of
head-scratching. Finally, the breakthrough came. The business manager had
jotted down the license plate number on a scrap of paper. She read it off for
the cop.
Eureka! Two of the
digits had been accidentally reversed! The 911 operator must have recorded it
wrong.
Dyslexia happens .
. . but what a coincidence! What are the odds? That meant there must be ANOTHER
red Durango SUV in town with a license-plate number nearly IDENTICAL to my
husband's.
Nevvvvver mind. My
husband joked with the policeman that, if anything ever happened to HIS mailbox,
he'd know who to call. Off the cop went on the fresh, new trail.
The afternoon was
uneventful until the drive home. My beloved was stopped at a red light, ironically
just a few blocks from "the scene." Suddenly, he heard the sickening sound of
brakes squealing. WHAM!
A truck rear-ended
a car, which rear-ended him!
The damage would
be slight, but he still sat there for an instant in shock. Then he smiled.
What if the
policeman who came to THAT "scene" was the same guy?
And what if. . . .
He was almost afraid to turn around.
If it was a red
Durango with a strikingly familiar license plate and a Hispanic-looking guy at
the wheel. . . .
Theme song:
"Twilight Zone."
But whew! Different
car. And new cop. This time, it was clear he was the innocent victim, not the
perp.
It wasn't any fun,
either. But at least it was only a fender-bender . . . not a mind-bender. †
