Saturday, March 04, 2006

40 laughs per mile

Most of my long-time readers know I was a police officer for several years, and being a cop for that long the sense of humor sort of rubs off on you. Even though you're off the job, the same things make you laugh. But nothing ever will beat the times on the job when my partner and I had pulled off some really fantastic practical jokes on other members of our squad, go here for the full story of the "Beeper Gag":
Or how someone in the squad chose to drive one of the lieutenants towards a nervous breakdown:
Or just general warped cop humor:
Anyway, this story is about the same lieutenant on the department that was the target of the Punctuation Pirate. The yoyoing fuel prices reminded me of this little caper we pulled off on him back in the early 90's.
This lieutenant would pontificate to us about things during roll call, mainly bullshit things we really didn't give a rat's ass about, but we had to listen to his shit every day before shift. This one night we were all staning there waiting to get our car assignments and he started railing us about the types of vehicles we were driving. Most of us on the squad had pickups and SUV's, I myself had a full sized Ford Bronco.
He had just purchased a used Volkswagen Rabbit diesel and said he was getting fabulous mileage with it and how we should all follow his example and drive more fuel efficient vehicles to help save the planet. He was pontificating so much we were all falling asleep standing there, giving us chapter and verse of Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance.
After he was done, a few of us decided to have a little fun with the LT.
One of the guys got a five gallon jerry can and filled it with diesel fuel and we started every night after roll call to put a gallon or so in the lieutenant's fuel tank to make it appear that he was getting far better mileage that he really was. This went on for a few weeks until one day he beamed at us form the podium at roll call.
"You're not going to believe this! I haven't been able to figure out my mileage yet, but I haven't had to fill up for over a month now! I'm getting great mileage with the VW!"
All of us in on the joke stifled a good laugh out of this and went left to head out on patrol. That night is when we put phase two of our devious plan into action... Shortly after roll call we started to siphon the fuel out of his tank... He ran out of gas heading home that morning... He filled it up and the very next night we again drained his tank...
We did this for almost two whole months. Putting in fuel for a few nights, then draining it out for a few nights. We never let it get into a definitive pattern and we all could tell it was baffling him. He had no idea what we were doing and even took it back to the dealer on several occasions, who naturally couldn't find anything wrong with the car. But the one thing it did do was stop his lectures on fuel economy from his dais.
One day he finally walked into roll call looking defeated. He explained to all of us sadly that he sold the Rabbit because of "ongoing problems" but was never specific on what those problems were.
The last I saw him he was pulling out of the district's parking lot in a Buick, and for some reason his license plate was upside down...
Copyright 2006 Thomas J Wolfenden

5 comments:

bevy said...

How do you siphon gas? Just curious. No reason for asking. Just wondering. No, I'm not gonna steal someone else's gas.

Sherri Sanders said...

I love practical jokes! We once photo shopped a picture of our old director of operations giving mother theresa a hug and hung it in the front office. He loved the picture. LOL

Lisa said...

That is so funny. I got a big kick out of that. Thanks for the laugh.

rat said...

hehehe that's gold!

berly02 said...

lol
That is so mean, but so funny!