I wear many hats.
Husband. Father. American. Seinfeld rerun-watcher.
And criminal, according to the U.S. government.
Yeah, it was stupid. The kind of stupid you can only achieve as a teenager.
Which I was.
Friday afternoon. My buddy, John, and I are on the way to see his girlfriend. She’s a freshman at Grand Valley State University.
We’re five minutes away from campus. Figured that was a good time for our warm-up beers.
I fish two Bud Lites out of the cooler in the back seat.
John’s driving. About eighty.
We crack open our beers. Two pulls in, and we see the lights behind us.
A cop.
“Maybe he’s after someone else,” John says, hopefully.
He’s not.
Instinctively – stupidly – I cram the beers under my seat. Maybe the cop won’t find them.
By the time he gets to my door, a beer puddle has formed around my feet. The whole car smells like a dive bar.
“Step out of the vehicle,” the cop says.
Funny how they say vehicle instead of car.
John and I are standing next to the vehicle as the cop searches it. He finds the two beers under the passenger seat, the cooler in the back seat, and the extra case in the trunk.
He tells me to get back into the car. The cop then walks John back to his squad car and makes him spread his hands across the hood as he frisks him.
I can see it all happening from the passenger-side rearview mirror.
Then, the cop cuffs John and puts him in the back of the squad car.
He then walks around to my door, tells me to get back out, and to open and dump all the beers.
Which is a real shame, considering how hard it is to get that much beer when you’re seventeen.
So, I stand there, dumping the beers, as the rush hour traffic goes by. I keep my face down, on the off chance someone I know drives by.
Like my parents.
Shit. My parents.
I’m going to be in so much trouble.
The cop eventually lets us go, but not before issuing us citations for Minor in Possession of Alcohol.
A misdemeanor.
John’s stepmom is a lawyer. She works some deal with the judge.
We’re made to appear in court, enter our guilty pleas, and pay a fine.
And I get grounded for a month. A month in the middle of my senior year!
I do my time and reintegrate into society.
I get on with my life.
And I try to forget my criminal past.
Until it comes back to find me.
As it did recently when I had to reapply for my security clearance.
“I dunno,” says the Petty Officer. “Sounds to me like you have to put it down.”
The security questionnaire is asking if I’ve ever been convicted of an alcohol-related offense. To me, that means a DUI or aggravated assault a la booze-fueled bar fight. I have neither on my record.
But there is that Minor in Possession.
“I paid a fine,” I tell the Petty Officer in charge of processing security clearances. “And I’m pretty sure my buddy’s mom made the whole thing go away.”
“Plus, I got grounded!” I tell him, still seething at the injustice. “My senior year.”
“I get it,” he says. “But the form doesn’t ask about any of that. It just asks about an alcohol offense, which it sounds like you got.”
Ah, the consummate bureaucrat.
I’m doing nothing to bring this guy around to my point of view. But I know he’s just doing his job.
The form asks for all the details of the offense – where, when, resolution, details of the court proceedings. All of it.
After hours of internet searching and a few phones calls, I finally get the details.
Bozung, Daniel B. Guilty. Minor in Possession of Alcohol. Misdemeanor. Kent County Circuit Court, Michigan. September, 1990.
It all goes into the security questionnaire, which I submit, chagrined, to the Petty Officer.
Weeks later, I receive notice that my clearance has been renewed.
The government has apparently forgiven me.
But not before ripping open that old wound. The getting grounded part, at least.
Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t have had those beers.
And maybe we shouldn’t have been driving eighty.
I understand that now.
But ask any seventeen-year-old.
A cold beer at eighty miles an hour on the way to see a girl?
Pure bliss.
Stupid? Yes.
Worth it? Totally.
Let that not be a lesson to you kids out there.