Once upon a time, me and my friends were slumbering following an incredible and surprisingly popular bonfire in Green Canyon. For some reason we'd set up the tent (which was massive, and fit the six of us comfortably) on an incline, and I was at the very bottom, so that I could only sleep on my side facing up or else I would just fall into the corner of the tent. I fully expected to wake up in the morning in the bottom of a dogpile because everyone kept sliding downhill. Instead, however, I woke up at about 6:30 to, "OW! OW! HELP!" over and over, coming from a few feet outside of our tent, with not-so-creative expletives sprinkled throughout. From his voice, I could tell it was a man--a very, very drunk man to be exact. He had woken us all up, and we exchanged silent, terrified, "What do we do?!" looks. Heather grabbed her pepper spray, I grabbed my pocket knife. We listened to the man stumble around, yelling belligerently. He didn't sound like he was actually that hurt, just really, really drunk and looking for something to yell about. At this point, we had begun silently brainstorming what to do. We couldn't call anyone, because we didn't want to call attention to ourselves by talking out loud, so we started texting our boy (space) friends to help us. After a few minutes of the man yelling (and yelling loudly), we heard him make his way away from the tent and down to our campfire area, where we assume he started throwing our extra wood around (that's what it sounded like.) Apparently he still felt like he was hurt, though, because he started banging on our cars, too, demanding that he be let into the car and that someone help him. After saying a prayer, we realized that it was totally kosher to call the police about an out-of-control drunk man (plus we were just generally fearing for our lives at this point.) So, because the vagrant was out of earshot, we called 9-1-1. I had sneakily unzipped the tent window to spy on the man through the trees, but all I could see of him was his white shirt as he banged on and yelled at the empty cars. The police, which included one car and one SUV, arrived at the scene within a couple of minutes and wrangled the man quickly (even though he had tried hiding... behind some shrubs... in plain site.) After performing a sobriety test, which the man failed with ease, and asking him the same questions over and over, they cuffed him, stuffed him in the back of the car, and drove away. The officers in the SUV stuck around to ask us questions and have us fill out witness reports.
Now, there are several really impressive components to this story. First: if you aren't yet aware, judgement and intelligence decrease dramatically when you're drunk; I know this for a fact now because as the man was banging on the cars to get in, there is one thing that he didn't try: actually trying the handles to open the doors. The cars were completely unlocked, but he didn't even notice because he was so out of his mind. He also didn't try asking for help from whoever was in the (our) tent that he stumbled past several times. Second: even the police were impressed by how drunk this man was. The officer that talked to us said that he couldn't stand ten feet away from him without wanting to gag because he smelled so bad. They'd asked him several times if he knew where he was and the man had answered with things like, "Well I'm from California," and "24 blocks east." He'd also tried to hide from the police several times behind tiny bushes, which is especially funny because, third: this man was massive. Not obese, but incredibly large in stature. They had to use two sets of handcuffs because his arms couldn't reach far enough behind him. He was probably six-foot-something and easily 300 pounds. He also had a mohawk and huge gauges, so I'm sure that's a comforting picture. But the cool part is that we never actually saw the man until he was safely in handcuffs chatting with the police. If we'd known how ginormous this man was before the police had showed up, we would have been exponentially more afraid. So I am officially thankful for the trees that obscured my view from the tent.
There are several morals to the story.
1. Don't camp in Green Canyon, because, according to the police officers, it's the "partying and drinking" canyon... We weren't aware.
2. Don't be a drunk vagrant. Because a bunch of college kids camping will get freaked out and call the cops on you, and the next thing you know (or don't know, because you're drunk) you're in the back of a cop car. Who knows what will happen to the guy, but I don't feel a tiny bit bad for him.
3. The power of prayer is real! Listening to that man stumble and yell drunkenly only feet away from me was terrifying, but as soon as we began to pray, I instantly felt comforted and confident, and I knew exactly what to do to handle the situation. And as soon as I saw the police, I knew everything would be fine, and by the time we were filling out witness reports, it was already a funny story that we looked forward to telling to everyone.
4. Police officers think 6:30 AM is early, too. Apparently they were all on their way to Angie's for breakfast when we called them. I told him, "Well sorry for making you fight crime, next time we'll wait until after breakfast to call you in!" He thought that was pretty funny. The end.
