Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Do you trespass?



One weekend recently I showed up to teach a writing class that was to be held on the property of a county park. The class was scheduled for ten o'clock. I showed up about 15 minutes early and found a couple of students waiting outside an impressive fence with a chain, a serious padlock, and a No Trespassing sign.

No problem; we were early. We chatted on; more students came. We hardly noticed that a half hour passed. No one showed up to let us in. A couple of delivery people came by in trucks and left when they realized there was no entry. We made a few calls with our cells—first to my contact at the school, who suggested I call the park police, whosuggested I call the city police, and so on.

The boring part of the story is that eventually someone came to let us in.

The interesting part happened while we were waiting.

A young woman pulled up in a low red sports car. She got out and addressed us.

"I have to get in there," she said. "I was at a wedding in the park last night and left my purse."

We shrugged and explained that there was nothing we could do until someone came with a key to the padlock, and we did expect the city police at any minute.

She grunted. The next thing we knew, she was scaling the fence. She plopped down on the other side. About ten minutes later, she approached the fence again, from the inside, and climbed out.

In her hands were a purse, a pair of shoes, and a bra.

She gave us a wink, got in her car and drove off.

My writing students and I got a lot of mileage out of the incident, creating many colorful back stories.

One thing that impressed me was the young woman's willingness to disregard the No Trespassing sign and its warning of a heavy fine.

I thought about how I am such a rule-keeper (well, most of the time). For me, the physical difficulty of scaling a fence pales in comparison to the mental and psychological difficulty of breaking the law.

Maybe that's why I write fiction—to break laws vicariously!




Would you have climbed that fence?

12 comments:

Jeanne C. said...

No.

Ellen said...

When I was young, I did cross that fence. I was scheduled for a night shift at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator. (I was an undergrad. Keys? What keys?) Nobody answered the doorbell, but through a locked chain-link delivery gate I could see people. So I went up and over the gate and walked right into the experimental area.

My, what a fuss there was!

Monica Ferris said...

Would I have climbed the fence if my purse (with valuables) and perhaps an embarrassing explanation of how I came to leave it (evidenced by the shoes and bra) in the offing, yes, I think I would have climbed the fence. Though the presence of witnesses might have made me do it down the way, out of their sight.

Monica Ferris said...

Would I have climbed the fence if my purse (with valuables) and perhaps an embarrassing explanation of how I came to leave it (evidenced by the shoes and bra) in the offing, yes, I think I would have climbed the fence. Though the presence of witnesses might have made me do it down the way, out of their sight.

Peggy said...

Well - me - no - but then I wouldn't have left my shoes and bra in a public park and need to return to get it at any cost!!!

Joanna Campbell Slan said...

I think if it meant retrieving my purse, I would. And if my bra was missing...well...sounds like she had a lot more at stake than a problem with trespassing!

Camille Minichino said...

THE Cambridge accelerator, Ellen? Impressive!

How about that large hadron collider today?

Camille Minichino said...

All good points about the nature of what was left in the park!

Linda O. Johnston said...

Fascinating! Good thing that no authorities appeared as that lady left with her belongings. The story might have had a far different ending. Would I have done what she did? Probably none of it, but hopefully she had fun, and now she has an additional story to tell.

Camille Minichino said...

I think I'm going to have one of my protags break the law soon!
It sounds exciting, especially if there are no real life consequences.

Betty Hechtman said...

I'm not sure what I would have done without seeing the fence, but I have Molly Pink trespassing all the time. She even gets caught.

Camille Minichino said...

It's nice to have that "outlet" (Molly) isn't it, Betty?