The down side to being so smart is that one cannot pretend ignorance about a great many things, one of which is the law.

I have in fact broken the law… many times, in fact, but I’m not about to divulge them to you. Well, maybe just a bit.

When you are a runaway child and your hungry that’s one thing, but when you are tucked into a foster home that feeds you and houses you… now it has become another thing all together.

One time, when I was about 14 years old, myself and my roomie decided to do a runner… but not a normal runner, just to her parents house. She’d been getting into trouble in school, so her parents did a kind of tough love tactic by putting her temporarily into foster care. She was a bit of a bad girl, now that I think about it, but I digress. Anyway, her parents had gone out of town, so their house was empty for super bowl weekend. We took it upon ourselves to hook up with two boys from school and break into her parents house to eat drink and be merry, so to speak.

What we didn’t know, was that her parents had put the house under watch, due to her unreliable teenage behavior. Someone saw us break in, immediately calling the police to report our teenage invasion. I think her parents must have been so ready for her shenanigans, they had given all authority to the police to basically scare the teenager right out of us.

One minute we were lounging on the couch, NOT watching the football game, and the next minute, the front door literally flew off its hinges as the coppers broke the door open and shouted their arrival all at the same time! Dirty cards, in my opinion… I was of the understanding that they are to announce first, and then enter! Not in this case, they didn’t! The next thing I knew, I was face down on the lawn, someone’s knee in my back, and cuffs were being roughly put on my 14 year old wrists.

I was then hauled to the pokey, where they tried to scare me straight by leaving me in a urine and feces marked holding cell for some hours.

F.Y.I. when you are trying to scare a teenager who has been assaulted and mistreated on a vile level… your peepee room only pisses her off! Just sayin…

To be honest, we all have a conscience that enables us to question the legality of a thing… I was 14 and I knew wrong from right, in fact, I understood it at a far younger level than most.

The idea of unintentionally breaking a law is sort of an impossibility for most individuals, if you think about it, because the law has been placed in order for you to know NOT to do it. I’m just glad the question didn’t ask if you’ve ever unintentionally disregarded a warning label… it’s a real eye opener to realize that some folks need to be warned NOT to drink the acid out of a car battery!

Here, have a cookie…