Two of the officers kept their distance by the entrance, while the other two approached the dining area. The suspect, meanwhile, sat with his back to the wall, his long hair hiding his identity, as he consumed two plates of sushi and a bottle of Jolt Cola. Teenagers around him were engaged in idle chit-chat, which he would join in on in between bites and sips. They sat, wearing costumes and stage makeup, finishing up their meals before returning to their high school to perform their second show of the day.
An officer with a moustache was the first to speak, his hands on his hips and within easy reach of both his pistol and his radio. “Attention, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, as he addressed the entire room but glared exclusively at the suspect, “we’ve had a report of a man with a Samurai Sword.”
The suspect, with his mouth full of rice and seaweed, nodded calmly, and said, “Why yes, it’s right behind me. It’s made of wood. Let me get it.”
The officer’s muscles tensed, as he replied, “No, that’s quite alright. I’ll retrieve it.” He approached the suspect carefully and reached for the black object leaning against the wall behind him, as the officer’s companion watched the suspect for any suspicious actions. Picking the object up, he eyeballed it and knocked on it a couple of times, to confirm that the object was, in fact, wood, and not some artificially-made wood substitute.
The officer then asked the suspect to stand up and proceeded to frisk him. Feeling a metallic and cylindrical object in the suspect’s right-cargo pocket, the officer removed it, slightly disappointed to find that it was nothing more than a flashlight. The officer then asked the suspect to remove the contents of his left-front pocket, and the suspect proceeded to remove all objects from both front pockets. The items were limited to a few crumbled pieces of paper, some pens, a five-dollar bill, a Palm-Pilot, a bottle of Binaca, and a pink and purple comb.
The officer then asked the suspect for identification. The suspect offered him the only form of ID he had on him: a photo-ID from tenth grade with the name “Albert Young.” The officer then asked Mr. Young for his address and phone-number, a request with which the suspect complied. The two officers then returned to the two by the entrance. One of them went to the SUV to run a background check on Mr. Young while the remaining three discussed what exactly was to be done with him.
After a few minutes, two officers returned to Mr. Young and asked him to step outside. Mr. Young complied, a bit apprehensive and worried that his sushi, left unattended on his table, might go bad.
A new officer approached the suspect, certain that he had important information that would indicate that Mr. Young was indeed a suspicious character, and possibly a terrorist operating under a different alias. “Mr. Young,” he said, “the number you gave us is listed under the last name ‘Daba.’”
“You mean, ‘Dava’?” the boy corrected him.
“Whichever,” said the officer, a little surprised that the suspect was so forthcoming in what he thought would be a secret. “Would you care to explain?”
“Dava,” the suspect answered, “is my mother’s maiden name. My parents can’t stand telemarketers, so they decided to list our number under the name ‘Dava.’ That way, if someone calls asking for Mr. or Mrs. Dava, my family knows that it is a telemarketer who got our number from a list, and we can just hang up on them. No worry, no fuss.”
The officer nodded, knowingly, understanding the nuisance that is the modern-day telemarketer.
Meanwhile, two of the officers approached the third, “We’ve got nothing,” they told him, eyeing the boy suspiciously. A moment later, the fourth officer approached, with a similar response.
“What exactly is the matter?” the suspect asked.
“We’ve been questioning witnesses, and no one can say that they saw you wielding the sword in a threatening manner.”
“Of course not,” the suspect replied in a rather “chill” fashion, “because I wasn’t. And it’s not a sword. It’s made of wood.”
“Technically,” an officer replied, “that’s true. But it still is a representation of a sword. If I walked around with a wooden gun in my holster...” He left the sentence unfinished, as if its ending were universally understood.
“But I wasn’t acting in an even remotely threatening fashion with it.”
The officers sighed, aware that they had nothing on the suspect. Three of the officers spread out, to find someone, anyone, that could tell them that the boy was threatening, so that their whole little venture could be made worthwhile. The fourth, meanwhile, stayed with the suspect. “Why exactly do you have this sword with you, anyway?” asked the officer.
“It’s a good luck charm,” replied the boy, “which I wanted to have since our school was doing a production. I didn’t want to leave it in school, so I decided to take it with me. I walked here, since the school’s right across the street, and I simply had no place to leave it.”
“You do realize, of course, that this wooden sword of yours can be considered a weapon.”
“Anything can be considered a weapon,” the boy replied. “I could attack someone with one of Genuardi’s plastic spoons, if I cared to. It’s all a matter of how you use any particular object. And the fact remains that I was a threat to no one with this sword.”
Shortly thereafter, the other three officers returned, and verified that no witness could claim that the boy threatened anyone. The suburban police officers, disappointed that the situation was not even more exciting but pleased that it had been exciting enough, let the suspect know that they were taking his sword back to the station, where they would proceed to play with it. They gave him a yellow slip that he could use to reclaim the stick at a later date. With that, the officers left, prepared to save Radnor from unruly old ladies running stop signs and loitering children.
The boy then returned to the high school, where several students had already informed others that Mr. Young took fifteen bullets to the chest from a dozen officers.