Surrounded

One evening last summer I was driving on Military Road through Rock Creek Park when I stopped at a red light behind another car. A D.C. police car pulled up along side of the car in front of me.

When the light changed the police car's lights went on and it pulled out behind the first car. Once across the intersection he slowed down so that I had to come to a complete stop. I'd have pulled out to go around him, I thought he was pulling over the car in front of me, but a white Cutlass had stopped along side of me blocking me in. With the guard rail on my left there was no place to go.

It was at that moment that my car was illuminated from behind and I realized that there was a second police car back there. We sat there like that just long enough for me to imagine that I would be told to get out of the car and lie face down on the wet asphalt, when the hispanic looking driver of the Cutlass, wearing a football jersey, waved his arm out the window in a forward motion. With a police car in front of me and a police car behind me and hardly enough room between the Cutlass and the car in front to squeeze my car through, I just sat still rather than take a suggestion from a curious bystander.

This seemed to irritate the Cutlass driver who next pulled a police badge out of his jersey and yelled something incomprehensible. Taking the cue that I was about to get into trouble for not being a wanted criminal, I pulled forward and made my way through the space between the Cutlass and the front police car and then went along my way towards home.