Of course, the curious thing is that 5 years after my father sprung me free of that trumped up charge of Grand Theft Auto out in the desert (and then, too, taking me home by way of a cross country flight through Reno and Chicago) I myself was carjacked by two hoodlums on the road west from the shrink's office to our home in Frederick, Maryland. Picking up those two shoddy looking teenagers at the Woodbine/Lisbon exit off of the 70/40 highway, I was caught totally unawares when the one beside me in the passenger seat pulled a switchblade on me while the boy to his rear shoved a homemade gun (a “zip gun,” I believe it is known in the trade) into my goggle-eyed face, and thus taking me prisoner they commandeered the vehicle to the other side of Frederick, letting me out a mile outside the city to find my own way home. This, I did with abandon, sticking my thumb out and hitching a ride home from the nearest passersby. And, so matters stood, until the contrary car was found a month later all out of gas and with the two thieves heading back its way, all ready to be apprehended for the crime of their choosing.
But if that wasn't bad enough when the case came to trial a year later as fate would have it the two boys had hired themselves a silver tongued devil of a lawyer the likes of which Fredericktowne had never seen.
“Mr. Mayo,” he said. “Just where did you pick these two young gentlemen up for their ride?”
Fidgeting nervously there in my seat in my first ever case of stage fright, I replied that it was one mile west of town. And then realizing my mistake too late(that was, after all, where they had let me out, not the other way around), I shifted about there at the stand.
“One mile west, you say,” he said with raised eyebrows. And then, before I could reply, he remarked that “You testify under penalty of perjury if,” he paused, “you should choose to lie.”
I dare say I saw the faintest of grins light up that barrister's face. “Well, best we get on with it,” I said to myself.
And so we did. “Is it true that, Mr. Mayo...” he was start off with one leading question after another. “And is it a matter of fact that...” It seemed that it would never end.
At the trial's end, not only were the two defendants found innocent of all crime but the next day all the papers read “Man Kidnaps Himself.” Jesus. I never could live that one down.
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