Melodies in the Key of Life

Authority Song

“Tell me what you’re going to do about it?”

I could barely think, let alone answer his redundant questions, “Watch and learn.”

He grabbed my hand, dialing back the volume, “Are you nuts? You’re acting like a three year old! You can’t just crank it louder hoping it will make him go away!”

“Wanna bet?”

Maybe I could not do anything to stop the tone deaf person next door from singing unintelligible lyrics off key at the top of his lungs to some obscure radio station, but I could engage in battle. With my other hand, and a simple touch on the dial, the music could now rattle the walls for real. The results were quite amazing. My roommate looked like a fish out of water with his face turning redder and redder and his mouth moving as if gasping for air.

Maybe the yahoo next door quit singing, but I was engaged in a frenzied dance to keep my roomie away from the stereo, that I would not have heard it. Maybe there was a call to warn us to turn it down, but I jamming to anything loud and would not have cared anyway.

A couple minutes later, I did, however, see the police officer push past my roommate and turn off my contribution to the Radio Wars. The police officer also looked like a fish when his red face got in my innocent one, spittle flying and ordered, “Keep it off or you’re taking a trip downtown.”

Part of me wanted to shut up and listen to authority, the other half wanted to tell him that he could not barge in my apartment without a warrant. The smart mouth won and I got a lesson in what a police officer could and could not do.
[w.c. 298]
done for the "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  on September 4. The winning entry was "borrowed" from the court reporters funny stories where the prosecuting attorney was grilling a medical examiner about how he knew someone was dead and the punch line is "the witness's brain was sitting on my desk." Maybe if I stole somebody else's work I would have won. Slap my hand, that was naughty. *Smile