How. How!? How could I have mostly forgotten the time that I was with a carload of teen boys in upstate NY and we got pulled over and the driver got arrested for reckless driving and put in cuffs in the back of the cop car and we were all “asked” to follow them back to the station? And yet I have only vague memories, suddenly, shockingly half-unearthed by a song on the radio.

How? Easy. It’s because it was scary, yes – we were scared for our friend’s future, for all of us good(ish) college kids maybe getting In Trouble in some way.

But it wasn’t *terrifying.* Nobody was afraid that any of us was gonna die – including the cop. There was no “keep your hands visible,” no gun drawn, no backup called. I remember him being bored in a town vs. gown sort of way; just another stupid-ass kid from the college making him have to do paperwork.

When we got to the station, we all sat around in the office. I think there was coffee. It was a Sunday morning in a small town, nobody else on duty in the whole place. We explained that we were on our way to the driver’s karate tournament and he really didn’t want to miss it, was there any way to let him go? Yes there was, and it involved the cop calling the local judge and the judge coming into the station just to hold a tiny little 5-minute hearing so he could officially let the kid off with a warning.

And we were done. It was over. It was no big deal. My mom never had to hear about it (until now, sorry Mom!).

We were all 17, 18 or so. We were all White. I would bet $100 in 1989 money that none of our parents had ever had The Talk with us about how to survive a police interaction. I’m damn sure I didn’t know that was a thing.

It’s the unimportance of the incident at the time that makes it feel so important to me today. It’s the privilege we didn’t know we relied on, as automatic and unremarkable as breathing — never even realizing that morning might have ended with #ICantBreathe in the snowy roadside slush. It’s the way that morning helped to shape my assumptions about how smoothly and safely our justice system works, for the rest of my life until just a few years ago.

It feels so right to trust the evidence of our own eyes.

It’s just, there’s so much about what I saw… that it turns out I never saw. There was so much more to see.

As always, sharing this process of re-viewing my old memories through a clearer lens of racial justice in case it’s helpful to any of you. Onwards, friends.