The Oinking Incident

It was the late ‘90s and longtime readers of “Life in Rough Draft” might remember me mentioning, a while back, that one particular friend from my teenage years was a heavy influence on one of the characters in my novel I.C.Q. I’ve never used his real name in that note, and I’m not going to start now — so from here on, I’ll call him by that character’s name: Barret.

That summer, Barret was more or less living at my house. His godmother lived in the same town, but she was quite a bit older than his own mother and had no idea how to keep a teenager entertained, so he’d come over to my place instead. Sometimes he wouldn’t go home for days at a time — borrowing my clothes, sleeping on the couch, just camping out.

We’d spend hours talking about computer games, which he was completely obsessed with, and about programming in Visual Basic. I already knew how to code by then, but it wasn’t something I was doing seriously or thinking of as a career yet. Mostly we just talked — movies, music, old stories, whatever came to mind. I wasn’t working that summer, even though I was off from college. Barret was about nine years younger than me, and despite the gap, we got along like we’d know each other all of our lives. I think I saw him a bit like the younger brother I never had.

I was also, at the time, still very much an immigrant trying to find his footing — a few years into life in the U.S., still figuring out the culture, still looking for a group of people to belong to. Rap was everywhere that summer, catchy and new, and a lot of people my age were really into it. Barret, who was mostly a ska and punk rock kid, started picking some of it up too, I guess mostly because of me. Somewhere in that mix, we both landed on a very fashionable teenage idea: cops were the enemy, the government was an easy target, and the coolest thing you could do was stick it to the man. Obviously it wasn’t original or deep at all but it was very much the mood of being a kid in the ‘90s.

Which brings me to the day I was driving my sister’s purplish, sporty little Mazda MX-3 down Anderson Avenue, a friend riding shotgun and Barret in the back seat, all of us cruising, half-listening to “Cop Killer” by Body Count — because of course that’s what was playing — half-watching the street go by. I was headed home.

A police car pulled up ahead of us and started crawling along at a snail’s pace — no signal, no hazards, nothing. Being the loudmouth I was, and probably showing off a little for my friends, I started narrating my displeasure at length. Eventually the cop car stopped dead in the road, double-parked, no indication of what was happening or whether we should wait or go around. After a few seconds of muttering things I won’t repeat, I decided to go around — carefully, signal on, taking my sweet time, because even college-aged me knew better than to give a cop any extra reason to pull me over.

Just as my passenger window lined up with the officer’s window, Barret — who had been quietly enjoying my rant from the back seat — decided this was the moment. Without any warning, he sprung up from the back seat, stuck his head out the window, looked the very startled officer dead in the eye, and started oinking loudly like a crazy man. Then, just as quickly, he dropped back into his seat, laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

I could not believe what I’d just heard. I was screaming at him before he’d even finished laughing — what is wrong with you, why would you do that — and it took him a second to realize I wasn’t joking. My house was right around the corner, so I signaled and turned, quietly hoping the whole thing would just evaporate behind us.

It did not evaporate. The patrol’s lights came on the second I turned into my street, and I pulled over right in front of my own house. The officer came around and let me know in no uncertain terms that what had just happened was not okay. My mother, who’d been watching the whole thing unfold from the living room window, came rushing outside. Barret sat frozen in the back seat, mortified.

I did what I think any panicking college kid would do: took full ownership, apologized profusely, explaining that my friend was young and hadn’t known better, and delivered about fifteen straight minutes of “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” I also think the officer was a little embarrassed at how worked up she’d gotten over being — not quite directly — called a pig, because eventually she let us go with just a warning and drove off.

My mother, poor thing, was rattled for the rest of the night, and honestly, so was I. Barret decided it was probably a good idea to head back to his godmother’s for a few days and let the dust settle.

For years afterward, that story became our story and whenever Barret and I reconnected at parties, through mutual friends, or however our paths crossed, it was only a matter of time before someone brought up the oinking incident, and neither of us could get through the retelling without cracking up. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of Barret, dead serious, oinking at a police officer out of a moving car. It’s just one of those memories that somehow gets funnier every year that passes, and I have a feeling that even now, with kids of his own, Barret would turn beet red if you brought it up in front of the wrong crowd.