It was about 2 am, and I was doing what I do best. Shotgunning beers and burning fire wood. My friends and I were on the beach, and we were up to no good. Thats the great thing about the beach. You can literally do whatever you want. You want to take the girl you just met behind the seawall and fuck her? Go for it. How about sucker punching seagulls who are only trying to get the food you put on the ground? It’s all acceptable. But even in the best of times shit can go wrong. And this night I almost wound up behind bars because I couldn’t keep my mouth closed.

So the fire we had going was blazing pretty big, but none of us were satisfied. We needed to find more fire wood. But it was dark and we didn’t have any flash lights, so we were stumbling around aimlessly looking for wood to burn. That’s when we came across some dead Christmas trees. All of a sudden anxiety hit a new high, and we  starting running back to the fire with the dead trees. It was a plus for me. I prefer to burn plants that are dead. It gets the fire back in action. The first tree went up, followed by the second. It was at this point when a truck approached us and shined its headlights right into our eyes.

Fuck I thought to myself. At 2 am the only people on the beach are drunks and cops. And since we hadn’t seen anyone in over an hour, we all knew who was behind the wheel. Sure enough this high and mighty cop gets out and tells us were doing the number one no no on the beach. His words not mine. Confused and drunk, we all looked at him like he was an idiot. It’s not illegal to set a fire on the beach, but that’s not what he was pissed about. It was the dead Christmas trees we were burning. None of us knew it, and we quickly replied back that we’d stop, but this cop was just asking for it when he mumbled his next statement.

"If the mayor was out here and saw this, he would take you all to jail."

Normally in situations like these, I would just take in what he said with no rebuttal. But this time I slipped, which happens from time to time. I looked at him and replied,

"If the mayor of your town is out on the beach at 2 am, where is he? Surely his incompetence will provide us with the much needed resources of the treasury. We just ran out of beer officer."

Naturally this cop was pissed. He started yelling at me, but I couldn’t make out a single word he was saying. I think it was somewhere down the lines of your a smart ass, and say one more thing and you’re going to jail. So I sat down and heard the rest of his lecture, and then he said he was going to give us a ticket for burning the trees. Thats about the time when my friends butted in. None of us knew burning these trees was illegal, and somehow they managed to keep me out of handcuffs. They also managed to get us out of the ticket. So the cop told us to put the tree out, and he was on his way.

We all learned a lesson that night. If you burn dead Christmas trees on the beach, you’re subject to a ticket. Meanwhile, I learned that mouthing off to a beach cop can have dire consequences. But the biggest lesson to be learned here is this. If you say something that makes no sense whatsoever, don’t be surprised if my mouth opens with a smart ass comment. I’m sorry, but I don’t have the patience to put up with stupidity. I’ll try my best in later altercations to keep my mouth shut, but that’s no guarantee. Even if the comment could land me behind bars.