By Mordechai Schmutter
We’re always talking about innovations in the field of science and art, but there are also innovations in the field of being a criminal.
For example, a couple of years ago, a woman in California was arrested for going on a cheek-pinching spree. She’d pinch little kids’ cheeks while their parents’ backs were turned. And these were kids she didn’t even know. Apparently the law is you have to know the child, at least. Who knew?
Criminals are always inventing new crimes, possibly under the theory that the cops can’t arrest you if they have no precedent for it. Our founding fathers never said you can’t pinch cheeks. Since when is that illegal?
Sure, you can ask, “What could the guy possibly have to gain by doing this crime?” but that’s just a side detail. There’s something to be said for being the first one to do something.
For example, police in Arizona responded to a call about shots being fired, and when they confronted the suspect, he told officers that he’d been shooting at the moon.
Do people do this a lot? That would explain the craters.
Why would someone be upset at the moon? I understand shooting at the sun or the clouds for messing up your day, but what does the moon do? It affects the tides? The guy lives in Arizona!
Maybe he thought the moon was following him.
Or maybe he was hunting. Everyone would be like, “Where did the moon go?” And you walk into his den and there it is, hanging on his wall. And everything is slowly getting pulled over to it.
“You like it? It really brings the room together.”
On the other hand, does he need a reason? There was some story a few years ago reporting that NASA itself was firing rockets at the moon.
Wait, why are we firing at the moon? The last thing we want is to go to war with the moon.
This is totally going to mess up yamim tovim.
According to news sources, NASA was investigating whether there’s water on the moon, and we don’t mean the kind of investigating where you look at things with a magnifying glass; we mean the kind of investigating where you hit things until you find answers.
Their idea was to break through the crust and see if there’s water up there, because if there is water, there could be life, and if there’s life up there, it will probably be mad at us for shooting rockets at its water supply. If the moon fires back, there’s life.
But I guess we don’t want to go to war with the moon just because of some drunk guy in Arizona. So the moon is safe now. (From lunatics, not from NASA.)
And speaking of messing with nature, a Nebraska man was arrested after police found him driving his SUV with no headlights at 2:30 in the morning. That wasn’t all he was doing. When police were questioning him, they saw several chickens in the back seat, looking out the window at them. Then the cops did that thing where you press your face against the glass to peer in, and they’re like, “Whoa, there must be 100 chickens back there!”
And there were 100 chickens. That’s way too many chickens. How many chickens do you need to pack? But this is why you get an SUV. Are you gonna get 100 chickens into your Honda Fit? No. You can either get 100 chickens into a car or get into small parking spots. Not both. And this was Nebraska, so there’s plenty of space for parking.
I’m sure you wonder what kind of motivation someone would have for transporting that many chickens at once, besides kapparos. But sometimes you have chickens, and you need to get them from point A to point B, and you’re like, “How many trips do you think I’m going to make? I have 100 chickens, and this car has only eight seatbelts!”
In the end, the chickens were adopted by farmers. I love that expression: “adopted.” At what age do you tell your chickens they’re adopted?
“Wait. We’re adopted?”
And speaking of packing things into your car, four teenagers in Germany were charged with driving a convertible that they’d turned into a swimming pool.
Why not? It’s convertible!
I’m not sure how you fill a car with water. If I filled my car with water, there would be floating cookie crumbs and gas-station receipts.
Maybe they accidentally went through a car wash with the hood down.
I’m also not sure how they got it to drive. As it was, the car had only one functioning gear, so at most, they were doing about 15 miles per hour, noisily. With water sloshing around.
The car first got the police’s attention when water splashed out of it while going around a curve. It’s too bad they used a convertible. If they’d used something with a roof, they could have filled it deeper, and maybe even put in some ducks or something.
When the joyriders spotted the police officer, they pulled over and fled the scene on foot. You don’t want to have a high-speed chase in a car full of water. You have water flying out the back, the cop has his windshield wipers on, then you make a sharp right turn and somebody gets swept overboard. Then you try to lose the cop on the Autobahn.
And speaking of speeding, there was a man in Canada who was pulled over by Mounties for going 112 miles per hour.
Wait. Aren’t Mounties on horses? How are they going 112 mph?
When officers asked him why he was speeding, he said he was trying to dry off his car. He used it as an excuse, like the law says “no speeding unless you’re trying to dry off your car.”
Why is it so important that he dry the car? Does he do this every time it rains? How wet is the car? Did he previously convert it into a swimming pool?
Also, a couple of years back, an Amish teen driving a horse and buggy ran a stop sign.
Well, “ran” is the wrong word.
This is what happens when you let kids drive. A horse. You’d think at least the horse would be more responsible.
So police turned on their sirens, and that scared the horse and it started running. He took off, with the police in hot pursuit.
Well, lukewarm pursuit. It was a low-speed chase.
After about a mile of this, the horse took a sharp turn and the buggy flipped over. The teen was charged for, among other things, “overdriving an animal.” So he claimed he was trying to dry off his horse.
Finally, a couple of years ago, a man in Sandusky, Ohio, was arrested for cutting grass in a public park.
“Hey! That’s not your grass!”
Is that really a reason to get arrested? Did they think he was stealing the grass?
“Hey! He’s making off with the park!”
Even if he brings it home, what’s he gonna do with it? Open a new park? Put it on his wall and have everything else in the room slowly move toward it?
What happened was that the man had noticed that the grass in his local park was over 12 inches long, which might not be something busy people notice. And it didn’t look like anyone official was getting to it, so he decided to cut it himself.
A few minutes after he started, workers told him to stop, for some reason, and he said no! for some reason. It was a ridiculous conversation, all while yelling over the mower.
So the workers showed him a list that said this lawn was scheduled to be cut at some point, and he told them to cut a different lawn. He said he was saving the city money—probably to the people who would’ve earned that money, so it wasn’t a great argument.
Then the police came and told him to stop. And he refused again. He was determined to save the city money, even if it meant extra work for the cops.
So what followed was a low-speed chase.
Okay, just kidding. What followed was that they arrested him.
My point is that it’s important that we talk about these stories, because now you know that these things are illegal.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of four books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com.