How Movie Obsessions got me arrested

I remember as if it were yesterday some of the wise words of my father growing up, he always had something to say and it usually sounded completely insane. For instance; I must have been no older than 5 when may father graced me with his first memorable words of wisdom;

“Son, when you get older you are going to find a woman but if you come home and find that she has suddenly developed the ability to sit on a broomstick and take flight, that my boy is a warning sign!”

My dad was a very blunt man, short in height with hair that added on about three inches, he looked very much like Sylvester Stallone in cobra, Especially when he got experimental and decided highlights were the way forward, he very quickly died these out though days later with a Grecian 2000 black shine hair dye and closely resembled the man from Soul Glo in coming to America every time it rained.

My dad had everything figured out and always had an uncanny ability to bring a smile to my face even if some of the things he came out with were completely crazy. If I had to pick a top 5 things my dad has said.

• Look! O.J Simpson on every channel! I'm a bloody fully grown man! Why would I want to watch cartoons.
• When asked “Do you want a bag for that sir?” replied “No you're alright son, I've got one” whilst directing his head in my step mothers direction
• Whilst Watching the matrix “You'd think he could have thought of a better name than Neil”
• David Copperfield the magician or the one from Charles Dixon
• On receiving his first ever text message. It's like a letter and a phone call all wrapped into one!

I loved my dads sense of humour, It was a little twisted at times and when I think of him and some of the lessons he taught me it takes me back to being 12 years old. I was a scrawny little streak of nothing, with ears that made me look like a wing-nut and obsessed with the world of cinema. I had three favourite films. The Rock, Mission Impossible and Con Air. Mission impossible being my movie of choice as every kid wants to be a spy at some point right? I vividly remember this one Saturday morning, mid June and my friend Mike had came around to see if I wanted to play football, we used to play on the grounds of my old school and then hide the ball and pretend to be Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible!

After an hour or so of pretending to play football and reaching the conclusion there was nobody about, it was time for our mission Which We had already chosen to accept. We had stashed a socket wrench set and some heavy duty rope from my dads garage in the bushes. We proceeded to the roof, now before judging you have to admire the creativity of two twelve year old boys for the next part, I mean we had already prepared ourselves with hairspray to detect any lasers that may cause us problems and maybe delay the task in hand. We proceeded to remove the skylight window and attached the rope to a protruding part of the roof. The other part of the rope was lassoed around my waste encroaching very uncomfortably into my area. It was time! Mike began to lower me down as I sprawled out mimicking some odd star fish in the air, it was kind of like the snowman just without the slushy at the end. As I found myself about five feet off the ground, I felt something I'd never felt before as I heard a voice say,

“What the hell are you doing?”

I felt my rear cavity close up to the size of a small ant and Mike had heard it too, he at this point dropped the rope and obviously ran, I fell to the floor, right before the legs of a Policeman. He was a tall, intimidating man and I had no idea what the hell to do. So I got onto my knees and thought, I know! I put my hands above my head; I had recently watched bad boys and that is exactly what the bad guys had to do. He shook his head and scooped me up. I remember basically being dragged out of a door and then for some reason I asked the policeman if he would let me go if I gave him my sweets. 12 years old and I think I am some sort of autistic Godfather by trying to buy off a copper with cola cubes and daddies herbals.

The next thing I know me and Mike are in the back of a police car and I turn to Mike and ask him.

“Do you think we can pick these locks?”

Knowing full well neither of us had practiced this yet, we'd just about mastered hitting a balloon with our Fk1077112's (elastic band shotgun to normal humans). We tried to reason with the police, in retrospect my reasoning technique wasn't wise, I tried humour with a touch of charm and blurted out.

“If you can let us go, I will tell you were the Bombs are” and chuckled to myself.

Luckily enough this was pre 911 and I only knew about bombs because I had watched face-off not long before.

Before long we were at the local police station, the fear that was now overwhelming was slightly overshadowed by our pride that we thought we were going to be interviewed by government agents turns out that was far from the case and the only thing we actually got close to whilst at the station was whilst being interviewed, there was a bad cop but the other guy wasn't a good cop, He was equally as much an ass as the first.

Now there is this thing with me, it still exists today, I may sometimes not know when to quit, this was certainly one of those times. When the red button was pressed and the tape started recording after every question asked I would strictly only answer.

“Cartwright 201084”

You see I also loved war films, I thought the name and number thing applied to police stations as well as P.O.W camps. I kept this up for a good half an hour until they marched me to a cell and slammed the door behind me, only after I had of course snapped out of my gulf war syndrome.

After about two hours of being incarcerated and doing push-ups whilst only stopping to check if my hair was growing at the rate of Cameron Poe in Con Air, The door finally opened and my dad was on the other side. I remember the look on his face as I explained exactly what me and mike had been doing. I recall his face holding back a grin and the as the father he was, and not wanting me to get myself into further trouble he chose to lay upon me this.

“Son, I have spoken to the copper outside, I am going to be honest, as your dad it's only fair. It doesn't look good. You are looking at 5 years in a youth offenders.”

My heart almost stopped and my eyes well up, he knew he had me so being a loving father he carried on.

“You have to prepare yourself, nobody is going to look after you and you are only small so you will almost certainly get bummed, just try and relax though because if you fight they might like it.”

Stony faced he looked at me and my lip was going and as my face was ready to explode into a well of tears, He stood up, headed towards the door and said.

“Now get up, lets go home. Never ever get in trouble with the police again and most importantly DO NOT tell your mother, you know she gets all Deidre Barlow about these things.”