A little while back, I was driving with a friend of mine and we passed a cop. "Five-O, be cool," I said. My friend looked at me like I was an idiot, and then she said, "Why did you say that?"
I explained that it is an inside joke I have with myself (the best kind, if you ask me). It all goes back to my junior year of high school....
It was the spring of 1997. I was dressed in overpriced Abercrombie clothing, I drove my black Dodge Neon, and I was fully enjoying my high school experience. (If this were a movie, I would start to play some song that captured the mood of the time, like Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind).
My school was the typical public high school in an affluent midwest suburb. You know the kind: 95% white, preppy kids make fun of the goths, and there was never anything exciting going on. So whenever something did transpire, students would turn out in high numbers to see what was happening.
Every day, I drove home my sister, a friend of mine, and a friend of hers. One day, the four of us were walking out the the parking lot when we caught wind of a fight that was to occur in the neighborhood next to the high school in twenty minutes. Of course, we decided to attend.
We drove over to the neighborhood, a typical "nice" development that you could find all over our town. The street was lined with student's cars, and it seemed like we were not the only ones who decided to take in the afternoon's entertainment. We parked and walked down to the yard where hundereds of students were milling around, waiting for the combatants to arrive.
Finally, they did, and everyone formed in a circle around them. After the standard posturing and shit-talking, one guy shoved the other guy, and the fight was on. But almost as quickly as it started, our fun ended. Predictably, one of the scared housewives who lived on this street was a little bit startled by the 200-plus teenagers who had descended upon her neighborhood, and called the police.
The patrol car turned down the street where everyone had gathered, and one member of the audience was the first to see it. "Five-O, be cool!" he shouted.
Upon hearing this, the mass of students who had gathered to watch the fight, my party included, suddenly bolted up the street, back to their parked cars. The whole time, I was laughing hyterically.
Three things struck me as funny about the situation: First, who the fuck says "Five-O"? Was the guy who yelled it trying to be hip, or was he a huge dork and a fan of the 70's cop drama Hawaii Five-O? Either way, I found it to be an odd choice of words.
Second, the reaction of the mob, upon hearing this warning cry, was anything but cool. I am not sure what the guy who yelled was expecting, but I think that 200 students rushing up the street and tearing off in their cars does not fit his defintion of "being cool".
And finally, even if we had acted cool, would that have changed the reaction of the policeman? What would he radio back to the station? "Yeah, this is Officer Johnson responding the the report of a disturbance on Timber Ridge Lane. There seems to be a large group of teenagers gathered here, but they all have their hands in their pockets and are looking around innocently. I don't see a need to check this out any further. Everything seems cool."
