» Frustrating AKA Abraham Bacoln

August 10, 2008, 11:48 pm
Filed under: tidbit

So tonight I went to the Putnam County Fair to get some pictures of the rides which is the only thing about the fair that amuses me anymore.

Wait, no, even though I have kind of given up on funnel cakes there is still cotton candy.

I decided that when I was done taking pictures I would get some cotton candy and head home. I stopped right beside the cotton candy boothkioskthing and knelt down to put my cameras away. Apparently I had also stopped directly in front of two Putnam County Sherrif’s Department employees. I honestly don’t know how their structure works – are they all deputies? I’ll just call them officers.

So I was about three feet away from these officers when I stopped to put my cameras up. I had just barely seen them out of the corner of my eye. Now picture this: I’m kneeling on the ground, my tripod collapsed and laying across one foot, and my bag open while I stow my film camera behind the dSLR with the huge wide-angle lens attached, all of this right in front of them.

“You a professional?” the first officer asks me.
“Hah, no, I wish,” I replied, still not having looked up.
“Well you got like a book or something?” he asked.
“I … actually, I do, but it’s self-published, so it’s not really a real book. I do this as a hobby,” I said, having finished packing my stuff up and standing up.
“So you do this as a hobby?” he says.
“Yeah, it’s what I do for fun,” I answered, digging two of my cards out of my wallet. I had one to him and one to the other officer with my standard self-deprecating line, “If you’re ever on the internet and really bored you can go look at some of my photos.”

The first officer looks at the card in the normal way, which is to say he looked at the front, turned it over, saw the words, said, “Huh.” Just like everyone else does.

The second officer looked at my card as if I’d handed him something that while if not necessarily distasteful at least certainly unexpected.

He looked at me with his sternest look and said, “You ain’t been takin’ no pictures of little girls or anything have you?”
I laughed and said, “No, if I had I’d be running away from you guys right now,” and apparently that satisfied them because they turned around and left.

It wasn’t until I had a moment to process what had just happened that I started to get pissed off. Are they seriously going to pick the one guy at the fair with any serious camera gear, the guy who stops at their very feet to kneel and put his stuff away, and accuse him of being some sort of pedophile? By the time I had my cotton candy in hand I was mad as hell.

You know, if I’d been doing something suspicious, or if I’d looked shifty, trying to hide my gear, or if there had been complaints – I could maybe begin to understand. But to just flat-out ask me (or in my opinion come halfway to accusing me) if I’ve been acting like a child-molesting pervert, man, that really gets my goat.

I have been debating between writing this down here just to get it out of my system, or writing a letter to the Sheriff’s Department. I finally settled on writing it here because what is the other option going to get me? A fat lot of nothing aside from more attention that probably won’t be positive.

Still tempted though. I’ll sleep on it.

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That’s some crack detectiving strategy going on with those there men of justice. Apparently your sexual predators all own up to it if you just call them on it. And now you know.

Comment by Jon August 11, 2008 @ 12:49 am