First Blood

I have always compared my life to cinema. I'm not exactly sure why but movies have always been a large part of my life and I've been able to find parallels between me and the fictional characters dreamed up by some of the world's best story tellers. In some cases the parallels have been nearly exactly as seen and sometimes it was only a basic theme that I have experienced.

Out of all the characters in popular American cinema, one I never dreamed I'd identify with is John Rambo. But last night it happened. The nights I sleep in my car I bring all the crap I've got in the back seat to the front of the car, and climb in back for my slumber. I usually park my car in a residential neighborhood with other cars on the street so I can just blend in and escape the likelihood of being disturbed by teenagers or other people.

I had parked in the city of Goleta, CA which is about three miles outside of Santa Barbara, and laid down for the night. I was awakened in the beginning of my slumber by a spotlight shining in my windows followed by a flashlight in my face. It was a Sheriff Deputy. He said, "What are you doing? This isn't an RV park!"

I wanted to say, "This isn't an RV" but I held it in.

He said some other stuff that I didn't pay attention to and called off the back up he'd apparently had on stand by, and told me to get out of town. I said "Okay" and "I'm sorry". Then pulled enough to the back seat so I could get behind the wheel and started my car and drove down the street. He followed me, which sucked because I was all turned around and took a few wrong turns trying to find the back road I wanted to take to Santa Barbara. And when I found the back road I turned the wrong way. That was awesome.

All in all it took about 15 to 20 minutes of pure police work to wake up a sleeping man and chase him out of town like in the old west. I was mildly upset and now I can see that if I were a Vietnam Vet suffering from some pretty serious Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder I'd have some real issues with the whole thing. Luckily for me and them, I'm not a killing machine and in my trauma the police were good guys, and I wasn't a ever prisoner. I just hope that there were no real crimes happening at the moment.