Decisions

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There are times in everyone's life that you are required to make decisions. I'm not talking about the everyday decisions, I'm talking about some big decisions, life-changing decisions. Something that rests on that singular moment where it either goes really, really well or spectacularly bad.

This is one of those times.

It was a typical university student night for us, me and my roomie, Mur. There was studying to be done, laundry to be done, cleaning the bathroom to be done and many other sundry chores that needed to be done. So we sat down and had a meeting to decide what to do. There may have been the odd beverage imbibed whilst we planned. In any case, after a long and drawn out discussion lasting approximately three and a half minutes, we came to a decision.

It was decided to head out to a party being thrown at a nearby community centre.

Here's where it gets complicated. There were two different community centres within two kilometers of each other, with similar sounding names. Mur was sure it was at the closest place to us, but as we drove up, it did not look like the happening place it should have been.

And here is the pivotal decision. I said to Mur that I didn't think this was the place and maybe we should check out the other location, but he said, "Sure it is. Let's go check it out." What could go wrong?

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First of all, there were four police cruisers parked around the perimeter of the building. As we got out of the conspicuously empty parking lot, I noticed a shadowy figure at the other end of the building holding what looked like a shotgun. I mentioned this to Mur but by the time he turned to look, the figure had vanished.

"C'mon, quit being paranoid and let's get in there," he said as we reached the front doors. We tried the first door and it was locked. Then the second with the same result. By the time we were approaching the third, it was starting to sink in that there were absolutely no lights on - anywhere.

Just as we got to the third door, one of the largest police sergeants on this earth was filling the doorway admirably. "What are you doing?" he barked.

"Trying to get into the party, what are you doing?" Probably not the best response, considering.

"Investigating a break in." Mur and I turned around to find another police officer standing beside us. This was shaping up to be an interesting evening. The sergeant stared at us for a few hours, or moments, I'm not sure. Apparently, we were deemed not worthy of his scrutiny anymore, so he told the other officer to get our information and he stomped back inside.

We produced our ID and the officer started to ask us some basic questions.  Name, age, address and so on. I wasn't really paying attention, and when he finished with Murray, he turned to me and started to ask the same things.

Then he asked "How are your eyes?"

A little taken aback, I said "They're fine, thanks for asking!"

Murray just about fell over, he was laughing so hard. "No, you idiot, what colour are your eyes!" he said.

"Oh. Brown and green" I corrected. The officer taking our statement just kept his face down and was writing furiously in his notebook. There may have been a suppressed chuckle in there somewhere, but like I said earlier, there were no lights on…

After a minute or two, both Murray and the officer regained their composure. The officer was kind enough to tell us the party we were looking for was at the other community centre, down the road, and maybe we should head down there, carefully and quickly, before the sergeant came back.

Mur and I looked at each other, then back to the police officer, who promptly said "Now."

Saying thank you, we nonchalantly bolted for the van and got out of there as fast as possible. One of the better decisions of the night…