Ok this didn’t happen recently, but rather a few years ago, back when I was a tad bit more into grog then I am now (yes..yes I was ) and we’d stay up late nights on the weekends playing guitar and drinking grog.

On this particular night, we had just finished a jam session at around 3 in the morning. I was tired, grog doped, and in need of willful unconsciousness. After farewelling my fellow band members, I walked (read: staggered, struggled, nearly crawled) to the road to catch a taxi home.

Now picture this. Its the weekend. Casual weekend. I’ve been at a friends place for awhile, and all i had were the clothes i brought on my back from home. Which, suffice to say, made me look like i was on my way to the community garden. I was wearing a singlet, brown and slightly tattered t-shirt. My pants was a 3 quarters hand-me-downs, also brown, and torn at the bottom. I had draped my towel over my shoulders. My hair, which hadn’t seen the sharp edge of a pair of scissors in months, was long enough to make me look like a member of a hard rock band that worships Satan on mondays, wednesdays and fridays, and attends mass on a sunday.

I was a sight. You can just imagine. Now, imagine me, looking the way i did, staggering along the road, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other (left foot forward!….hold…right foot forward!….hold…), and at the same time trying to stop a taxi. In Fiji there is a general rule when it comes to catching taxis. The later the night, the more scary up you look….the less chances there are of catching a taxi. In my case, it was like winning the lottery by dipping a roach in ink and letting it scratch out the numbers itself.

But catch a taxi I did. In fact, by the time i reached the road, the first vehicle to approach me was a taxi. Tonight was my lucky night  I waved at the taxi, and he stopped. As I got in, I took a glance at my would be chauffeur. I couldn’t have picked a more worse driver.

This guy was young, tiny, and obviously a first timer in this parts. He was dressed up to go clubbing, and not to drive a taxi at 3 in the morning. He was of small stature, and nervously gripped the wheel as I dropped my body in the backseat…directly behind him. Now, there is another well known rule about taxis in fiji. The person who sits directly behind you if you’re the driver, is the person most likely to rob you if said person looked thuggish enough. Period. And I just happened to chose that exact spot.

“Where to boss?” he nervously quipped.

Of course, I wasn’t paying attention to all these trouble signals. Hell I just wanted to go home. So, after slamming the door, i glared at him through the rear view mirror, and muttered “Nakasi”.

Big mistake number one was getting in the taxi behind mr driver. Big mistake two was acting like I was bad boy from the streets, and worse, looking the part. Big mistake number three, which was entirely my fault, was to give him a bad look. As we were driving along, I kept noticing how the driver was nervously glancing my way throught the rear view mirror. This got really annoying, to the point where the next time he looked, I looked back at him and scowled. Real smart as I was about to find out.

We eventually came to a policepoint. Nothing special about police checkpoints, since they have them all over the place. This was mainly to catch drunken drivers and…well…just drunken drivers. I don’t think wanted criminals would be stupid enough to drive through one of those checkpoints.

As we approached the checkpoint, I noticed the driver glance at me one more time. Inwardly, I groaned. This guy was really starting to piss me – wait…we were stopping. Why were we stopping? The police guys didn’t wave us down…oh oh.

A single policeman approached the taxi. This time I sat up, shook the grogginess from my eyes, and blinked.

“Why are we stopping driver?” I asked.

He didn’t look back at me this time. Something was definitely up.

“What happen?” asked the policeman as he came on the left side of the car, shining the torch inside.

“Hey boso”, pleaded the driver, while shooting a nervous look back at me, “Can you sit with me as I take this falla?”

“Why”, the policeman replied, “where you taking him?”

“Nakasi.”

While this was going on, it still didn’t ring in my thick skull that I was being held in criminal regard, and that if I didn’t play it right, I could be sleeping on the floor for the night in some police cell.

At this moment, the policeman swung his torch to the back where I was sitting.

“Oi,” he yelled, the gruffness in his voice definitely not portraying the polite police banter i was so used to seeing in the movies.

The torch was shining directly into my eyes, and the effect was quite intimidating. I raised my hand to block out the light, but it turned out that was the wrong thing to do.

“OI!” he yelled again, this time with more effect, “put your hands down!”

Immediately my hands dropped, and I squinted in the harsh light, feeling very very small indeed.

There was a pause as the policeman scrutinzed me. I felt like I was already on the lineup of suspects, the harsh white light, the lines behind the wall, the card I had to hold up which had my identity on it, the voice tests, the -

“Hey, you that falla who always visit your friend near the police post?”

I have a friend who stays near a police post. Every time I pass by, I wave at the officers who know me by face. Usually they’re are sitting down around a bowl of grog, enjoying the slow evening and yarning away. 

Apparently, this policeman was one of the guys posted at that particular area, and had recognized me as a regular visitor to my friends place.

“Trues up! You that falla who always visit your friend near our post eh?” The policeman pointed the torch down and continued with a big smile, “oooh driver this falla set falla saraga. He no problem boy. Just go just go. Falla set.” With that he waved the driver on and gave me a thumbs up.

I sighed with relief at my close (not my first mind you) brush with the authorities. Then it hit me. The bloody driver thought i was going to rob him!

Me? Gentle soul me? Dear Mister blogger who wouldn’t kill a fly (though I did have a habit of catching them when I was small and burning their wings off…hmmm…), let alone even consider attempted robbery. Good lord! The nerve! I couldn’t even throw a punch to hit a person, let alone knock them out enough to run off with something. I mean, the last time I ever punched someone was way back in class 6, and that was over some argument about skipping in line. I’m a good boy! I swear!

…

I had to check with the driver just to make sure.

I tapped the driver on the shoulder as we settled into the drive.

“Driver, do I look like the kind of person who would rob you?”

And without skipping a beat, he looked me straight in the eye and smiled nervously.

“Yes”.

Dammit.