I set my alarm for 9:30 am on workdays, and today I jerked awake, my heart pounding, at 12:07. I vaguely remember hitting the snooze button a number of times, and at some point was apparently able to stop the terrible chirping altogether.
Grrr… This is not the way I like to start a day.
In any case, I was going to tell you about my latest altercation with a park ranger today, and will try to squeeze that into whatever time I have available — which isn’t much. Shit, I’m starting to feel like an excuse factory…
What’s the deal with park rangers, anyway? Seriously. Every time I spend time at our local state park, I find myself in some sort of “conversation” with one of those guys. Every single time, without exception.
The day before my latest yurt adventure was to kick-off, I called the park office to see if I could check-in at 1 pm, instead of 3 pm. There’s nobody in that campground this time of year, especially during the week. I figured it wouldn’t matter, one way or the other. Right?
Wrong. The woman said I had to wait until 3, so they could clean it. And she acted like my request was simply outrageous, and unprecedented.
“Are people actually staying in it the night before?” I asked.
“Well, no. But somebody could show up later,” she said.
“Forget it,” I said, with a hint of attitude. “I don’t want to throw everyone into a panic by asking that the rules be relaxed a tiny bit. My god, that would be unthinkable.”
“Would you like to speak with the park manager?”
“No.”
So, I was already aggravated. Anyone with even a droplet of common sense knew that ridiculous thing would not be rented the night before. It was cold and rainy, and the campground was empty. But whatever.
I arrived at 3 pm, and the yurt was locked. It’s supposed to be open, with the key on the table. But it was locked-down, and not another human was there. And at this point I started using a lot of grown-up words…
I still had the office number in my phone, from the previous day’s fun, and called it. A busy signal. My blood pressure was rising, steadily and consistently. I stood around and waited for about five minutes, and called it again. Busy.
So, I’d have to drive over there. And it’s not exactly right next door. It’s a bit of a haul.
When I got there, an older woman said, “Can I help you?” in a tone that suggested I might be smeared in animal feces. What the hell, man? Why the constant hostility? I told her the story, and she grabbed the key off a nail sticking out of the wall.
“I’ll have someone bring it to you,” she said.
“Why can’t you just give it to me now?” I asked.
“That’s not the way it works,” she answered.
Good god! I went back to the yurt, and eventually a man showed up, and unlocked the door for me. He then handed me the key, and told me to enjoy my stay.
I don’t want to sound cocky or anything, but I’m fairly confident I could’ve opened that door without his help.
A little later, an official ranger showed up and apologized for the mix-up. He was friendly, and we stood around talking for a few minutes. He seemed like a good guy, and I wondered if I might be judging the place a little too harshly.
But the next day I received my answer. I was writing, it was mid-afternoon, and I heard a car pull into the driveway in front of the yurt. So, I got up and looked out the door. It was another ranger.
I walked out onto the porch, and the guy had an angry/exasperated expression on his face.
“Can I help you?” he said, aggressively.
“No. Why?”
“What are you doing here? What are you doing inside this yurt?”
“What the hell? What do you mean? I rented it.”
“You rented it?” he chuckled, sarcastically. “Well, would you happen to have your paperwork handy?”
“Yeah, it’s right here,” I told him, and went back inside to retrieve it.
And he came inside behind me, and started looking around. WTF? The guy was all cocky and accusatory, and I handed him the paper.
“You’re supposed to tear off the bottom, and stick it to the pole outside,” he said.
“Nobody told me to do that.”
“Well, that’s the way it works,” he grumbled.
“So, you think I just go around from state park to state park, breaking into yurts?”
“If you’d followed the rules, I wouldn’t have had to bother you,” he said, and left.
What a fantastic, fully-realized asshole. And it happens every time I go there. It’s not the same guy, but one of them hassles me about something every time. Every single time.
Toney says I should file a complaint with the park manager, and I considered it. But I have trouble hanging on to anger. Know what I mean? Some people seem to maintain it for a good long time, but it usually evaporates quickly with me. Oh well.
And that’s my latest run-in with the forest police, or whatever. Have you ever had any problems with one of those guys (the rules! the rules!), or am I just the lucky one? Tell us about it, if you have.
In fact, why not tell us about your latest encounter with an asshole, whether it was in a state park, or at Target, or wherever. Use the comments link below.
And I need to go, like right now.
See ya tomorrow!
Tammie, LFMAO! I’ve never understood the hair in the crack thing. I understand why we have eyelashes and stuff, but what is the point of butt hair? Does it serve a purpose?
God, I have so many asshole stories besides the one I already told you about…Lets see…
When I was 18 my parents bought me a 1995 Chevy Baretta. Since this was my second car, and and a step up from the ’87 Plymouth Sundance, I quickly developed a lead foot, driving around in my ’95 sports car (what I thought was a sports car, leave me alone). But there was one particular cop in town who absolutely LOVED pulling me over, and HATED my guts, and I never knew why. He caught me speeding one time, and that was it. I wasn’t ignorant to him or anything, just a typical speed stop. But after that he knew what I was driving, memorized my plates, and that was all he needed. Every chance this fucker would get, there he was, giving me a ticket. Whether it be going 5 over, no seatbelt (I swear he caught me driving one day when I was going a BLOCK over to my grandmas for the seatbelt), he would bust U-turns in the middle of traffic if he’d see me coming the other way, just to find some reason to search my car. He was a total fucking jag.
I worked at a local pizza place in town, and he would come in with his bitch wife and spawned child, and I would always get stuck waiting on him. He’d pretend he didn’t even know it was me, then leave me buck for a tip, or nothing at all. As much money as I dished out for his constant watch on me, all he can muster up is a shitty attitude and a buck? Gee…thanks.
Overall, I think this asshole ended up giving me 4 something tickets in like a 9 month span, and I ended up losing my license, my self respect and whatever else I had left. I was forced to have my mom, dad and 16 year old sister drive me around for a year.
One night, my sister (who looks like me) and I were going out and he pulled HER over while leaving town, checked her license and said, ‘Oh, I thought you were Brittney driving in a different car.” Frisbeed (not gave, FRISBEED) her lisence back her, and walked, clearly dissapointed, back to his cruiser. She had this car for a month, and he had already memorized her too for simply being related to me.
That was fuckin’ it. My parents had, had it too, and decided it was time to file a complaint against him constantly harrassing me.
Guess what came of that? Nothing. Because that’s how our justice system works. Just like how that off duty cop got off scott free after beating the shit out of a poor innocent bartender.
But I after my suspension was up, I drove a ’87 Ford Tampon around, moved to a different town, and eventually got an SUV. I’d like to see that peice of shit find me now. I’m pretty sure that asshole looked for me like he was on an extravagant treasure hunt for years before finally giving up and quitting the force and moving himself into a mental institution in fear that I’d been a made up being that entire time. Or so I can only hope…goddamnedfuck.
And that my friends, is why I loathe cops and the ground they walk on, and always will.
I even remember his name too…Burns…Officer Rick Dicksuck Burns.
Brittney — I can see why Officer Burns shortened his first name to Rick instead of Dick. Dick Burns sounds like a vagina full of bad decisions.
Was dicksuck his maiden name, or his middle name?
It was his street name.
JTB and Juancho…some dispense subtlety with all the grace of a 5 lb splitting maul. Others, like you, gently touched the canvas with a feather.
If I am not mistaken, park rangers ARE police officers, aren’t they? They write real tickets and I think they carry real guns… so depending on your opinion of law enforcement, you could draw some comparisons/conclusions.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching a couple a-hole park rangers issue my friend a roadside sobriety test at the reservoir in Pueblo. We were out on his boat, and I had been putting down the beers, but he had only one. The rangers pulled up by us, saw all the empties, and decided to tow us to shore to test him, since he was at the wheel. I sat there, giggling, because as they were wasting their time & ours, testing George for at least 20 minutes, 2 boats loaded with loud, obnoxious partiers cruised past.
I have a similar one to JeffinDenver – we got pulled over in Havasu same way and the park ranger (who, sadly, does have law enforcement “privileges” shall we say) was all consumed with sobriety testing my friend who had a few beers on the lake throughout the day. While he was wasting his time (my friend is a real officer himself, who pretty much knew he would get out of the ticket) two boats full of drunken twenty somethings, collided and then saw the ranger giving us shit and sped off. The ranger nearly jumped into the lake and swam after them. Not sure if he got them becasue he was so busy explaining to my friend that tearing through a parking lot to load your boat onto your truck is not a safe thing to do. (No shit!). My friend was handcuffed and the ranger informed him of all the people he could have killed etc etc. Had to make his own dick look big I guess….My friend pulled out his real badge and the guy let him go.