FAKE I.D. FIASCO
After second year at university, M & I did drove to Florida for a break.[1] When we got to Florida we wanted to buy some beer and wine, but had forgotten that you have to be 21 (because, ridiculous drinking age). So, I had the brain wave to do the high school treatment on my drivers license to alter my birthday by the required one month (I was a week shy of my 21st birthday). I can’t remember the technique exactly - something involving a layer of scotch tape. We had been imbibing on my grandparent’s old person liquors/liqueurs at this point, and I was neither thinking clearly, nor at the height of my draftsmanship capability. In any case, no-one ever asked us for ID and I forgot I had ever done it.
A couple of months later we go to see Helix at the Captain’s Room. Helix is best known for a song called “Rock You”, which featured the uniquely creative lyrics “Gimme an R - O - C - K”. I can’t tell you anything else about Helix. I CAN tell you that a gig at the Captain’s Room is nothing to write home about. Let me drescib the Captain’s Room. The Captain’s Room was on the first floor of an Inn that serviced the shipping crews that stopped in a small great lakes town to pick up loads of grain in the early 1900s. Should you have pictured the “captain” moniker as somewhat upper crust, this should disabuse you of that idea. I expect it was something of a brothel. The rooms upstairs had long since been bordered up by the time the Captains Room became a stopping point for local alcoholics with low standard from Sunday-Friday, and the go-to grubby bar with peeling linoleum and 6 ft ceilings for the high school and college kids on Saturdays. [Note: the Captain’s Room is now gone, having been replaced by a retirement community development. Otherwise it would still be hoping on a Saturday night with April Wine or Chalk Circle]
Normally there is no cover at the Captain’s Room - they should pay customers to go in there! But MEGA star band HELIX was there so there was a $5 cover. Which I didnt have. I have to leave my wallet with the “bouncer" - who, it is worth pointing out was a 16 year old girl (aka not of drinking age, even in Quebec) - so I could go find M and get cash for the cover. Inside was a something of a high school reunion and it took me a while to do the rounds, find M, and get back to the grade ten security guard at the front door. Turns out she got bored and spent my hiatus rifling through my wallet, taking out my ID and picking off the late night Florida doctoring job (which I had completely forgotten about). I was, like, “Dude I’m, like, 5 years older than you”. Then got all pissy with the manager, who pretended to agree with me, but in retrospect could only have been thinking “what a twat”. But it was too late, the tween door cop had already called in the “real” cops.
I had to wait in the day drinking bar area with the local regulars - who took great joy in having someone to look down on for a change. 30 Minutes later, the cop shows up - he looks like he is straight out of central casting for “Police Academy 4”. I am thinking he might be the hall monitor door keeper’s older brother - by about two years. The manager quite kindly tries to tell him not to bother - but it is junior frosh cop’s very first night on the job and first ever call. This is literally the highlight of his one hour long career to date. He also has zero authority (shocker) to let me off.
Not surprisingly baby copper has no idea what to do. So he brings me out to his cop car so that he can call into his superiors without the Captain’s room gang shifting their scorn from me to him. I sit there for what feels like an hour, but was probably … well, it was probably an actual hour … while kindergarten cop finds the right paper work and attempts to fill it out. I am away from the concert long enough for Helix to have finished their first set. M meanwhile (still not aware that I have gone awol) is across the street getting pizza, when he sees me in the cop car. So, he joins me and we eat pizza in the back seat while Private Benjamin Button finishes the paperwork.
Months later, I get a call from my mom telling me that a court summons has come in the mail. I have to go to court! Because altering your drivers license is a federal offence - as though I was doctoring false IDs for sale to criminals looking for a "fresh start”. Midway through first term I have to drive 5 hours to attend court. Its me and about two dozen DUI cases with drivers aging 16-96. When I go before the Kangaroo court judge, he’s, like, “why are you here?”. And I was, like, “I don't know”. Pure Perry Mason. In the end, he fined me a hundred bucks, which was less than a ticket for drinking on your front lawn at university.
Like all these stories, there is no life lesson - not only in the story, but in real life. Because I the only thing that really sticks with me about this event, is that the home-alone door keeper kept my $5 cover and I never got to spell out R-O-C-K.
Darn it all.