Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Denton County Police

Last night, two of my girlfriend's best friends celebrated their 22nd birthdays, so we all went out to a local bar near campus and said cheers to a spectacular 22nd year. The night was full of chatting, and everyone had a gay ol' time. That is until they decided they wanted to switch bars. I had not had anything to drink, mind you, besides a White Russian. But that was early in the night and I was being a responsible little engineering student and offered to drive to our next destination. This is when things got interesting.

I pull out from our parking spot and we hear a funny noise coming from the rear end of our car. As I pick up speed, the noise gets worse, and there's a slight turbulence in our drive. It turns out, we blew out a tire somehow. To make matters worse, neither me or the significant other knew how to change a tire. Yeah hush - I know I don't know anything about cars, don't rub it in. So here we are sitting on McKinney St. stranded and confused. A random guy pulls up to us and offers to help. He was equally as clueless about the whole matter, but some help was better than none.

Then, out of nowhere, a police officer drives by. For once I'm happy to see those flashing lights. He pulls up to us and I expect he'll lecture us for stopping up traffic in the middle of the road or perhaps ask me how much I've been drinking (I was well under the limit FYI). But no, the gentlemen walks up to us and asks us what happened, introduces himself, asks if we need help. He even helps us change our blown tire. By now a friend of ours shows up as the officer began loosening the tire lug nuts, and the other random dude that pulled up to help us excused himself. We all worked together in jacking up the car, shining the flash light, holding lug nuts, chatting about what it's like to be a cop, etc. This is the most pleasant experience I've ever had with a police officer. And I've had my run-ins with Denton County Police before.. I even blogged about a different experience here. Another time, I was pulled over for going 10 meters in the wrong direction on a one way and despite my squeaky clean record, they wrote me 2 citations - the other for an expired inspection. Thanks a lot for the warning....

Anyway, it turns out the girlfriend's Sequoia was in no mood to be jacked, and broke our first Jack and refused to work with our second jack. The officer called us a Tow Truck, and stuck with us the entire time we were having trouble. He was a likable guy with a wife, 4 month old daughter, and a fun sense of humor. Apparently, Denton officers get paid a little better than Corpus Christi officers ;)

In the end the Tow Truck helped lift the car, we swapped tires, and we were on our merry way. I took a picture of the whole ordeal but somehow it didn't save, and my phone died.. I'm more pissed about that than having the blown tire.

Thank you, Officer King. You are a gentleman and a scholar.