Hello, my name is Harry, and I was caught
by the police… and my father was one of the policeman who caught me. My Mom left us when I was 5, and I’ve only
seen her several times since then. I’m 16 now, and this whole time I've lived
with my Dad. He was and still is a policeman, and a very
good one at that. I was very proud to say that my dad was a
police officer when I was a kid, but I realized that it wasn’t as cool as I thought it would
be. He would always come home late and just watch
TV. Every time I tried to talk with him, he would
barely answer, more often he would say two words, like ""yeah, okay,“ and that was
it. Like, I would ask him to help me a little
bit with my homework, but he would say, ""Figure it out yourself, I’m tired.“ By the age of 15, I kinda stopped talking
to him, 'cause there was no point in it. He wasn’t interested in anything that was
happening in my life. But it definitely had its advantages. I could basically do whatever I wanted because
he was never home. I could invite my friends over or go hang
out with them at any time. Recently, my friend Jason got his driver's
license and his parents bought him a used car. We live in a small-ish town, so it was awesome
to have a car, now we didn’t have to walk everywhere. If we wanted to get a burger or something,
it was just a 5 minute drive instead of a 20-30 minute walk. All four of us could hang out in this car
as much as we wanted, listening to music and hiding from the cold of winter. We LOVED this car. I also started learning to drive a little
bit, usually on the outskirts of town. We got so used to the fact that we never got
in any trouble that we started to... overdo it a little bit. We would open our windows and speed around
really fast, putting our heads out the windows, and even putting our tongues out like dogs. We had this long main road in our town, that
went straight through and outside of it. It was incredibly straight and smooth. And there were barely any cars driving around
our town at night. You see where I’m going with this, right? Once, Jason drove through it at full speed
and it was awesome, especially with the right music on. We were shouting and cheering all the way
through the drive, and I BEGGED Jason to let me do it myself one night. Finally, after WEEKS of begging, he finally
said, "Yes,“ although he really didn’t wanna let me do it. We drove outside of the city, and I took the
wheel. My heart was pumping. I started the car. Soon we were driving at full speed, with the
windows open, feeling the wind, and shouting as usual. Even Jason got chill after a while and began
to just enjoy the ride. But then, in an opposite lane… there was
a police car. We flew past it, but then we heard the sound
of a police siren and saw police lights behind us. I panicked and started to slow down. Jason got very nervous, saying, “What are
you doing!? Don’t slow down!” “What do you mean don’t slow down!?” I asked. Jason continued, “If my parents find out
about this, they will take away my car and I don’t know what else! Just drive!” I couldn’t believe it, I tried to say that
this was incredibly illogical and that we would probably get into even more trouble,
especially if it was my Dad, but Jason and other guys continued to shout, “Drive!” So I did, I sped up, and turned our car onto
one of the smaller streets, and then I slowed down again, because there were a lot of cars
parked. Jason got nervous again and said, “Dude,
get out of the driver's seat, let me drive!” I did what he asked – we got out of the
car in order to change seats, all of us were scared and we kinda knew that we were doing
something really stupid, but we had no choice but to commit to it. As I'm sure you've already figured out, our
daring escape didn’t really work out in the end. A police car stopped behind us, and two policemen
got out of it. Of course, one of them was my Dad. He looked at me and I looked at him. I saw anger in his eyes, although he tried
to remain calm. For some time, we just looked like that at
each other, nobody saying anything. I started, “Dad, I can explain…” We were told to wait in the car, but our windows
were open, so we heard what they were saying. The other officer said, “Come on, they’re
just kids, let’s just give them a warning, so they won’t do it again.” But my Dad said, “They have to learn responsibility.” So all my friends' parents were called. Jason’s parents took away his car, but otherwise
we were basically given a speeding ticket and we were “sentenced” to several hours
each of community service where we had to clean up our park and stuff like that. I apologized to Jason and we were able to
laugh about it later. The fact that we tried to drive away was mostly
ignored, because it was our first offense. But… it got very awkward with my Dad. He wouldn't let me go anywhere and was watching
me… more closely than usual. So, like from 100% stern to 150%. I was angry at him and even stopped saying,
“Hello” to him. It was worse than it was before. One evening when he was off work, he came
to my room and said, “Get dressed. Let’s go.” I asked why, but he didn’t answer. I was very scared of what he was going to
do next, I couldn’t even argue or try to argue, because his face was VERY serious. I got dressed and sat in his car. We drove in silence. Needless to say, this made me even more nervous. Suddenly, we stopped outside a burger joint. We went inside and he asked what I wanted
to eat. I was… surprised. We ordered burgers and started to eat. After a very looong and awkward silence, my
Dad said, ""Don’t do that again.“ I nodded. Then, after another long silence he asked,
""How are you?“ I looked at him and said, ""Fine.“ Then after ANOTHER long silence, I started
talking again. I told him all about community service and
how much trouble my friends got into, then talked about school and everything that was
on my mind. He would sometimes ask something, but mainly
he just listened. Afterward, I asked him, ""And... how are you?“ He smiled for a second and then told several
funny stories from his work. We drove home. It was silent again. He said, ""Let’s do this again sometime.“ I agreed. And, um, I guess that’s the end of the story. After a while, he let me go out more again,
but I wasn’t completely free, like before. And we're talking now. He tells me stuff, I tell stuff to him. In a weird way, our reckless driving made
me and my Dad closer. But… yeah, I won’t do that again! Have you ever gotten in trouble with the police? Please tell your stories in the comments. And don’t drive too fast, it WILL get you
in trouble!
