*This wtda was written by Nathan Mallon, Jared Owens, and Tim Mallon.
It all began late one Friday evening after a long day of hard work. My brother Tim, roommate Jared, and I met for coffee at a local establishment in Nashville to discuss some business ideas. After an hour or so of discussion we decided to take a walk at the nearest public park and smoke cigars to unwind a bit. When we arrived we noticed a sign that said the park hours were only until 11:00pm (it was a bit past midnight at the time). The little outlaw in us won over, we decided to stroll through the park anyway. We began walking until we came to the perfect climbing tree. The branches were large and low and basically screamed “COME AND CLIMB US GUYS! IT’LL BE FUN!” Jared and Tim scurried up the tree first, I followed slowly behind due to my slight fear of extreme heights.
If you’re afraid of extreme heights, say 8 feet, then don’t ever focus on what you’re doing. It’s better to imagine you’re climbing a tree. When Nate finally arrived, Tim and I had already smoked 3 stogies and decided on a new and fool-proof stratagem for getting everything we want in life and the business plans for our imminent estates. Trespassing in parks with cigars is the perfect setting for these kinds of plans. I decided I was going to wed a library scientist who resembled Scarlett Johansson and name our first child Rosa Parks because that’s the name of a street here. Tim said he didn’t know, and then we all talked about women in North Carolina, business ideas, cock fighting, dog fighting, fight club, deep sea fishing, and how to make the world’s best gelato, and all the sort of things that men talk about whilst sitting in trees. Then suddenly and from nowhere at all, a cop car came smoothly down the park lane.
What to do about cop cars in public parks after hours: be silent. We were very very silent. The cop car made a wide, slow, lazy turn. We all watched in muted agony, puffing on the cigars and listening to Tom Petty’s “I’m Learning to Fly” emanating from a bar off in the distance. “I want to fly somewhere legal,” I thought. “Somewhere safe, on the ground, at home, in bed.”
What to do if the cop stops and blinds you with his offender beating maglight: simple, don’t come down. Pretend you’re a morning dove and make cooing sounds, OR pretend you’re a psychotic wreck and can’t see, and you don’t know where you are. Cops don’t climb trees, ever, though they might shoot morning doves. We did not get shot and the cop proceeded on the beat, only to stop 20 yards away and park. Then to our great dismay, another late night, poking cop pulled along side our cop to shoot the breeze. This was unacceptable. It was time to go to bed and we wanted to climb down. Hang the women and the wealth. What were we going to do?
As the clock neared 2 in the morning we decided it was time to leave. Finally, one of the cops left and went about on his patrol around the park. Jared devised a strategem (that is the second time we have used that word thus far) for scurrying down the tree whilst keeping the cops sideview mirror blocked by the tree trunk. So down went Jared. Down went I. Nathan followed lastly as we all proceeded to crawl on our belly ever so stealthily away from the tree and cop whilst (that is the third time we have used that word thus far) keeping the cop’s sideview mirror blocked by the tree which we were leaving. About 15 minutes later we have all successfully crawled away like navy seals upon a successful assasination to the nearest pine tree. We then congratulated each other and made a mad dash through the front of the park and out the side to the awaiting rescue chopper… I mean… cars.
We headed home and realized that we just had a great time. It was one of those nights where the mood is right and afterward so is the world.