Dawn’s Great Idea

My husband and I were in charge of our local community theater’s version of the Oscars ceremony (ours is called The Willies™), so it was our responsibility to organize the skits, songs, and entertainment for the fun evening in December.  In doing so, we needed to borrow a specific camera which played a prop in a very funny show that was staged in our community theater last year.  My friend had borrowed the camera from her workplace, so I asked her if we could use it for a skit in the awards show and she obliged.  She couldn’t make it to the awards show, and I still haven’t gotten the camera back to her.  Through a series of email exchanges about how to get her the camera back, she came up with an idea:  why not just drop it off at her husband’s workplace – which is only 2 blocks away from my house – rather than drive the camera all the way out to her house in the country.  Great idea, I told her, and I meant it… until I found myself walking into the county courthouse carrying an ominous large silver metal case.

Turns out, my friend’s husband works in the county’s adult probation department, and so now I’m walking around the courthouse with something that looks, well, extremely fishy to say the least.  My husband was with me, thank goodness, and I was glad to have the moral support because of the many strange stares we received…  We found her husband’s office, and when you enter the adult probation department, there is a counter with a bulletproof glass above it.  So evidently, they tend to be skeptical of their visitors to begin with, and now here we are with our peculiarly large metal case.  We asked to see my friend’s husband (he knows us at least), but as luck would have it, he was out to lunch.  “Can we just leave it here?” we were forced to ask, prompting a very skeptical probation officer to ask, “Is it ticking?”  I started thinking about those signs they have at the airport that explain how joking about bombs or explosives is a felony offense, so I bit my lip, worried I might accidentally utter some sort of lame quip that would get us into deep trouble.  My husband opened up the case and showed them what was inside…  just a camera, we swear!

Not really a big deal, but a funny experience nonetheless.  Had we been in a bigger city, we might have been thrown to the floor and cuffed – it really was a shady looking case, and I can’t blame people for being a little cautious and apprehensive about it, especially in this day and age.

So thanks for saving me the trip out to the country, Dawn, but honestly, I don’t think either of us thought this idea through…  unless you were setting me up to get some sort of hidden camera prank footage, maybe to be shown at next year’s Willie Awards™?  🙂