When it comes to being a law-abiding citizen, the most frequent crime I commit is going 66 miles per hour in a 65 miles per hour zone. Wink. Wink. Occasionally, because I am from Massachusetts, I might also observe the local guidance on traffic lights I share below.

Over the years, I've had a few brushes with the law, beyond a ticket or two, but nothing serious: I am not a felon, if you were wondering.

Here are a few 'incidents' as the men and women in blue would say.

From the Free Dictionary by Farlex: "Have a Brush With"

"Have an encounter or come in conflict with, as in: This was not the first time that Bob had a brush with the law. This expression alludes to the noun 'brush 'in the sense of "a hostile collision," a usage dating from about 1400."

There have been six times where I had brushes with the law, and I am listing them here in order of importance.

Yellow Light Brush:

There is an old joke about Massachusetts drivers and traffic lights that goes something like this: Green means Go; Yellow means Floor it; Red is merely a suggestion. 

When I first moved to where I live now, I went through two yellow lights, I’m sure something close to the 2,501^st and 2,502^nd of my driving career, and the local police stopped me. I got warnings both times, but of the 351 cities and towns in this state, this is the one town where I don’t go through yellow lights. Avoiding an additional brush with the law.

Speeding Brush:

One day, on the way back from Boston, I was having a bad day, and got pulled over in Brookline for exceeding the speed limit. I wrote about that experience here. 

I was released without any negative consequences. A close brush with the law.

Jail Brush:

As a senior in college, I wasn’t as lucky. One night a couple of us went out to a local bar, called Mike’s, a few miles from campus in North Amherst (any UMass alumni reading this knows exactly where it is). Near closing time, we called back to the fraternity for a ride and walked outside to wait. 

There was a large, noisy crowd outside the bar. Some perhaps were waiting for rides, some perhaps negotiating alliances for the night, some perhaps a little too overserved.

Group by group they left or drove away. We were the last three people on the sidewalk in front of the bar when the Amherst Police pulled up with lights flashing. We looked around to see what the focus of their attention might be, and realized it was us. Apparently there had been a noise complaint when the large crowd was starting to disperse, but we were the only ones left standing, so they did what any good officer would do. They loaded us into the police cars and brought us in to the station. This was a serious brush with the law.  

This is where the ‘law of threes’ became evident to me. We were put in one cell. Three people, one cell, no seats. Three cells in the station, all three loaded with three people. Nine people, three cells. Guess what everyone did as soon as they were in the cell? Used the toilet. Guess what wouldn’t flush?

The lights were on bright, occasionally they’d bang the back of the cell to keep us awake, and we spent the night on pins and needles wondering if we’d be arrested, wondering if this would impact our graduation status, or worse, if it would impact our employment status.

About 6 am they released us. No charges, no comments, no nothing. We just left. My first real brush with the law left a lasting impression. I had spent a night in jail and didn’t enjoy it. It may have been my last visit to Mike’s.

Prison Brush:

After my freshman year in college, I played on a summer league soccer team based in Walpole. Not sure how I ended up there, I must have had a teammate at UMass who encouraged me to join the team. One of the teams in the league was the Norfolk County Correctional Center, a prison in nearby Dedham. They had an unfair advantage: they didn’t play any road games; all their games were 'home games' played inside the prison.

Our team showed up an hour before the game and emptied our pockets into lockers in the reception area. I think we were fingerprinted as well and some kind of ink symbol was placed on our hands, I guess to tell us apart from the prisoners. In small groups we were ushered through a metal door that clanked behind us. We were in a 12 by 12 space, all cement walls with a guard turret above us. 

Once we were in and inspected, they opened the door on the other side and let us pass through into a cement wall line corridor, where we were ushered into another 12 by 12 space, under another turret, and the same thing happened. Think ‘locks’ like on the Panama Canal: one was filled, then emptied, and another was filled then emptied. It was college soccer players instead of water, but the same concept.(Older readers familiar with the TV show ‘Get Smart’ will understand better the door openings and closings since it resembled the start of that show). 

The recreation area was sprinkled with inmates sitting on benches, walking around, playing basketball and lifting weights: just like you imagined just now. When we finally made it to the field, this collection of college kids was a little bit intimidated by the older, very aggressive players on the other team. 

The referees were also inmates. You can guess how things went. There was tripping, not called. There was punching when going up for a head ball, not called. You name it, it wasn’t called. 

The scariest moment for me was when I noticed the ink on my hand was becoming less visible due to the sweat when I wiped my forehead. For a minute I worried that I wouldn’t get out of there. I did get out, by going back through the ‘locks’ in reverse and able to say for the rest of my life that I had spent some time in prison. A real brush with the law.

Armed Brush:

About two years after our marriage, we were living in a townhouse apartment, and I was the night manager at a local restaurant. 

As part of my duties, at the end of the night, I would call the local police for an ‘escort’ to the bank. They’d pick me up, put me in the back seat with the deposit bag, and bring me to the night depository drop box outside the bank, protect me while I made the deposit, and then bring me back to the restaurant. This happened dozens of times per year.

One night, about four AM on a warm July morning, as my wife and I were sleeping with the window open in our second-floor bedroom, those same officers showed up at our apartment, banged loudly on the door and shouted: “Police. Open Up!”

I ran downstairs in shorts and t-shirt and opened the door. On each side of the door, guns drawn, were officers and another policeman announced they were coming in. They had me surrounded, one went to the back door and let two other officers inside, who were guarding the back of the apartment in case I made a run for it.

By this time my wife had come downstairs and seven of us: five policemen, my wife and I are standing in the living room, with two of us wondering what the hell is going on? We provided our licenses, answered a few questions, and I was asked if I could come downtown for questioning. There had been a crime in a nearby city, and they wanted to interrogate me.

You can imagine the fear we experienced, but I kept thinking to myself as we rode to the station: I might have been in this same car, with these same officers last week. This is crazy.

As I was escorted up the stairs into the station, a disheveled guy sitting on a bench in the entryway asked me for a cigarette. I told him I didn’t have any and was escorted into a room. As soon as I entered the room, an officer said to me “You’re free to go.” Hmmm.

As they drove me home, they explained that an Army truck at nearby Fort Devens had been robbed. One person was shot, the other was the person who asked me for the cigarette. At the scene they found a license with my address on it. Apparently, whoever lived in the apartment before us was a bad dude. My brush with the law lasted about two hours, and no one was hurt. The next night I rode in the back of the police car with a different memory.

Positive Brush

As the president of a restaurant company in Cincinnati, I worked with the Hamilton County Sheriff on something called the Teddy Bear Squad. Our fourteen stores in the county collected new Teddy Bears for Sheriff department employees to keep in the trunks of their cars so that if and when they were in a situation, either domestic issue or car accident and there was a child under stress, they could give them a Teddy Bear to help calm them down. By far, the most enjoyable ‘brush’ with the law that I’ve ever had.

If you live in the past, that's depression,

and if you live in the future, that's anxiety.

So, you have no choice but to live in the present.

--Sarah Silverman