weapon

The other night, one of the fellow law students in our ward recruited Fred and me to participate as witnesses in a mock trial. Today Fred briefly went over my character with me before running to his afternoon classes.

About an hour later, there was a knock at the door. I opened the door...to find a pack of mean-looking cops.

"Oh!--hi," I said. This must be part of the mock trial, and maybe Topher forgot to mention it to us, I thought. I immediately racked my memory for all the details of my character: Paula Chang, 111 Lincoln Ave, two men fighting, 10 feet apart, Red Apple Restaurant, gun shot, 11:00 pm...

"Good afternoon," the giant cop said while he and the rest of the cops simultaneously held up their badges. "We're here under a search warrant."

"Oh," I said, realizing that this had nothing to do with the mock trial.

"It seems you are housing a weapon," the cop explained.

I quickly thought of all the possible weapons in our apartment. Cutco knives, Venus razor, fabric scissors. I just got an immersion blender with our gift cards--THAT could do damage. Did Fred bring in his golf clubs from the car?

The cop continued, "A maintenance worker was here earlier, and he reported seeing a weapon on top of your computer."

Our computer? We don't have a computer...other than our laptops, but we were gone when the maintenance worker came, and we had our laptops with us.

I opened the door wider and said, "I'm not sure what you're talking about, but come on in!"

They all stomped their big heavy boots into our front room, their pencils hesitating above pads of paper.

"Now, I'm going to have to ask you some questions. Are there any other residents here besides you?"

"Yeah. Well, I mean, my husband. He lives here. With me, I mean. We live here together."

"So this entire apartment is yours?" (Gestures around the apartment.)

"Just this unit, yeah." (Wanting to make fun of him for making our 600 sq ft linoleum dump sound spacious.)

"Do you mind if you show us to--" (shuffles through papers and reads through some notes) "--the bedroom on the left?"

I led them all down our hallway to the bedroom on the left. While we were walking, the cop said, "The maintenance worker reported seeing a gun in this bedroom."

"A gun?" I repeated, thinking about how I've never shot a gun in my life.

Then it hit me.

And I started laughing really, really hard.

Because, you see, in that bedroom in plain sight on the desk is Fred's airsoft gun. I pointed to it from across the room, and the cop started to laugh, too. He picked it up, opened it up, and guffawed, "Oh man, it isn't even loaded! Oh man." It was a nice moment, a cop and me keeling over with laughter. He turned and called down the hall to the entire squad, "Code 4! Airsoft!" I heard them all start laughing as they turned and filed out of the apartment. The cop shook his head, put the deadly weapon back on the desk, said thank you, and sauntered out of the apartment.

The end.