I Can't Believe I Forgot To Post This Story

Closest I've come to being arrested in years.  In my life, probably!

I'm out geocaching one day last week with my usual caching partner, a guy in his mid-50s.  Neither of us are particularly threatening-looking...I'm the quintessential 40ish soccer mom, he's gray-haired with a neatly trimmed beard.  Both of us are wearing jeans, t-shirts and hiking boots and we're on a mission to find a whole group of new caches in a park maybe half an hour south of where I live.  We'd just pulled out into the road from our parking spot by a small bridge after bagging a cache when the policeman pulled up behind us and put his lights on.  I cussed under my breath and steered my soccer mom-mobile into a nearby parking lot.  (I ask you: who pulls over a Volvo SUV with bumper magnets advertising a local travel soccer club, rescued dogs and a martial arts program, for Pete's sake???)

Turns out a fire marshal driving by happened to see my partner (up on the bridge) passing a pen down to me (under the bridge) and jumped to the logical conclusion that we were attempting to blow the bridge up.  (What the hell????)  He radioed for the policeman, who came running.

Not being at all new to the rodeo of having to explain the concept of geocaching to policemen (happens a couple of times a year), we get out of the car and go talk to the guy. My partner has his phone out and he's showing the guy the cache map of the park, explaining that the bridge has a cache under it and that he was passing me down a pen so I could sign our names on the paper inside the container.  The policeman is nodding and all is going well till he happens to look over at me and noticeably stiffens up.  I realize belatedly that I've gone into my reflexive martial arts deference-to-authority mode, otherwise known as a rest stance...hands clasped together behind my back.  Oh shit oh shit oh shit he thinks I'm holding a weapon!!  I immediately showed him that all I had in my hands were my car keys and phone and he relaxed visibly.  Whew. Close one.  

He still ran my plates and both of our driver's licenses.  Luckily we're a pair of fine upstanding citizens, and once he saw that both of our records were clean he let us go.  Close call though. Especially since I realized after the fact that my car keychain has a kubotan on it for self-defense, one of the nasty metal variety.  It's somehow legal to carry one in this state but not to sell it (I got mine from Amazon.)  If he'd made a big deal about the fact that I carry a no-joke weapon on my keychain it could have gotten ugly fast!  Lucky me...should have bought a lottery ticket that day.