Ignorant, Cute Face, Golden.

Oh how grateful I am for once, for this "Golden Rule" that our society has etched into our brains. This is the story of how an ignorance of boating, being a cute young girl (and white, let's get real) was the golden ticket to getting out of a possible $1,800 fine:

It started with a "date": two acquaintances getting to know each other a little bit better because of an English assignment. Marin was the first person to ask me (it was before I had even heard the assignment!) and I was very much surprised and excited because she had always seemed like a really cool, down to earth person to me. But then we went on this date and it was totally lame.

NOT!

She really is just as cool and down to earth as I had perceived, if not more. We took a dingy from her dad's boat across the bay to Kellogg's beach and had a picnic. It was great! A beautiful day, a cooler full of snacks, sandwiches, the wonderfully polluted San Diego Bay at our toe-tips, what could go wrong?

Nothing really, except we could run out of gas and the motor could not start. But what are the odds of that? Well apparently the odds were not in our favor, because that is exactly what happened. But it was a sunny day, we'd had a great time, no worries, we'll just laugh about this. Thank God for our good humor to get us through.

A nice beach-walker decides to take pity on us, and he helps us. Turns out he knows all about dingy motors, what luck! He informs us we're low on fuel, does a couple little magic mechanic things, and the engine starts. He says we can make it back if we hurry. So we hurry, all the way across the channel, approaching the marina and the little baby poops out.

But again, just our luck, the harbor police station was right there. They came over and happily gave these two poor high school girls a ride home; I'm sure they were smirking and rolling their eyes all the way back to her boat. We were trying to laugh it off still, even while taking the "tow of shame."

They drop us off, and take down our info: name, address, date of birth, parent's names (getting a little worried), parent's phone numbers (now a little scared). While we were trying to keep our cool, be polite, and listening to all their very important input, they tell us all the violations of the tiny dingy, scratching them down on a little note pad. With each infraction they find, I could just hear the chorus of "ha-ha"s going on in the brains of these two white cops; one tall and bald, one shorter with a cliche cop-stache. That racks up about 1800 dollars worth of fines, they tell us.

Initiate face-palm. We are in deep. But we play it cool: Marin just moved into the boating-world a few weeks ago, we honestly didn't know the rules, yes, thank you officer so much, yes, I now realize the dangers of not having a fire extinguisher on a dingy just in case our engine catches fire in the middle of a huge body of water. Thank you so much for the tow, we are eternally grateful.

Turns out the cop has daughters, he lets us go lightly, no fines, you live and you learn, right? We readily agree, say our thank-yous and goodbyes, pry our lips off of their asses, and quickly gather our things and leave.

We really dodged one there. Had we been black or hispanic, it would not have been that easy. If we had been boys, white, black or hispanic, it still wouldn't have been that easy. If we were older and wiser, we would have had to pay the fines. But we weren't. We were cute, teen-aged, white girls who are in high school, live in Point Loma, and can therefore get off with a warning.

They think their system rocked our boat, but really, we rocked their system. Two tennagers. Two little girls. Go Harbor Police.
What a date.
~Kat