Leftover Guilt

Today I was walking back to my car after spending a delightful time in the library. I really do like spending time in the library--perhaps a little too much, because they tried to charge me rent there once last semester. They said there was a 12 hour limit/day/student, and I had passed that 28 times so far Fall semester. So I switched to another building to study.

Anyway, since this is a new semester, I guess the rent-thing doesn't apply anymore. But I digress. I was walking back to my car and I saw a police car parked right next to it. And I suddenly panicked. Had I parked illegally? Was my car dripping large amounts of oil or anti-freeze? My mind quickly scanned everything I had done in the last 48 hours to see if my sudden guilt and fear had any foundation. As I drew closer to my car, I saw, much to my relief, that the police car was actually parked next to the car right next to my car, not next to my car, and the police was talking to a guy (presumably the owner of the car) who was holding a flashlight and looking in the windows.

I quickly got in my car and drove away before they could question me about whatever was going on with the guy's car. After all, being parked right next to him, I was a likely suspect.

As I drove away, I started to think about what has caused this unnatural fear of the police--because actually, every time I see the police I feel a little twinge of fear. Skipping over the fact that I speed perhaps more than once a year and ignoring the many books I have read about militaristic-type governments in the Middle East and Nazi Germany, I finally realized that this fear began when I was a young child.

I was 5 or 6 and we had gone on an extended-family camping trip reunion up Provo Canyon, as I recall. The reunion was fun, as I recall, and I got to play with my cousins and do other camping things, like slide down a muddy hill and eat dutch oven cooking. As we were packing up, I had found some beautiful wildflowers (which looked like weeds to an adult but violets to a small child) and picked a few of them to take home as a memento of the trip.

After I picked them, I continued walking along the trail, waiting for the rest of the family. It was then that I saw, to my horror, a sign that said something along the lines of, "It is illegal to pick the wildflowers."

(This one is from Israel. I didn't have any pictures from Provo.)

Illegal?! I had just broken the law!! I looked down at the already-wilting purple flowers, the evidence of my criminal act clutched in my tiny fist. I panicked. I went and hid in the car, or something else very grown-up like, while I waited for my parents. On the ride home, I felt sure that the police would be waiting at my house with a warrant for my arrest.

I seem to recall that I asked my parents about the legal state of one who has picked flowers from a national park, but whatever they said did little to allay my fears. I resigned myself to life as a criminal.

Well, the police weren't there when we got home. They didn't come all that night, and I think by the next morning I had thrown away the "evidence" (my flowers) and moved on with my life.

But apparently the guilt is still there, and I don't think I will be surprised at all to run into the police one day and have them say, "Breanne? We have been informed that you picked wildflowers at a national park when you were 5. Please come with us..."